Inflammation of the liver, and their sequelae : atrophy, cirrhosis, ascites, haemorrhages, apoplexy and hepatic abscesses / by George Harley.

  • Harley, George, 1829-1896.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inflammation of the liver, and their sequelae : atrophy, cirrhosis, ascites, haemorrhages, apoplexy and hepatic abscesses / by George Harley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    His temperature was Iiigh, and his skin freely perspiring. It was arranged that I should puncture the organ; but on arriving at his house with the view of performing the operation, he stoutly refused to allow it to be done. Sympathetic pneumonia set in, and, as was shown a few days afterwards by the abscess bursting and emptying itself through the lung, adhesions had taken place; on the one side between liver and diaphragm, on the other between diaphragm and lung. He died suffocated from the hepatic pus filhng his bronchi. The next case is one of metastatic abscess, and is se- lected not only as showing how a trifling amount of pus in the digestive canal may induce a secondary abscess in the Hver, but hkewise how difiicult is sometimes the diagnosis. The case fell under my notice when house physician in charge of the fever wards of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in 1851. It is briefly as follows.— A well-built lad of 19 years of age was sent into the fever ward under the impression that he was suffer- ing from typhus fever. His pulse was rapid, his skin hot, his tongue foul and tremulous. The hver, though not enlarged, was excessively tender on percussion. There was neither jaundice nor bihous urine, and the stools were of the normal colour. A few days after admission he was seized with pulmonary sjonptoms, rapidly got into a hectic, and then into a low typhoid state, and died nine days after admission. At the post-mortem an un- suspected abscess, the size of a swan's egg, was foimd embedded in the right lobe of the liver. Besides which, two smaller ones, the larger of them about the size of a walnut, were found in the middle lobe of the right lung. On examining the intestines a drop or two of pus was found in the peritoneum, on the outside, and at the apex of the appendix vermiformis. Its cause was soon dis-