A treatise on the functional and structural changes of the liver, in the progress of disease : and on the agency of hepatic derangement in producing other disorders : with numerous cases, exhibiting the invasion, symptoms, progress, and treatment of hepatic disease in India / by W.E.E. Conwell.

  • Conwell, W. E. E. (William Eugène Edward), 1785-1836.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the functional and structural changes of the liver, in the progress of disease : and on the agency of hepatic derangement in producing other disorders : with numerous cases, exhibiting the invasion, symptoms, progress, and treatment of hepatic disease in India / by W.E.E. Conwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    physically injure this organ, it is accounted for by the series of changes produced on the circula- tion, and by the nature of the tissue wherein it takes place. 82. After a fall or a blow, the heart's move- ments are more or less irregular, or imperfect, and consequently the large veins and tributary vessels, especially those of the liver, become con- gested. Nevertheless this latter organ continues to receive nearly an undiminished supply of blood for some time, owing to the extensive resources of the hepatic artery and vena porta (§ 63. 64.). The heart being unable to receive and dispose of the current carried to it by the inferior cava, the liver is exposed to sanguineous congestion and inflam- mation, followed by suppuration ; and those are precisely the consequences that experience proves to follow from such injuries. The lungs are less subject to suffer from similar injury, because the volume of fluid poured into them is less varied and their circulation is more energetic. 83. The popular fear of after consequences, the justice of which is shown by experience, and sanctioned by professional observation, has enacted a kind of rule, to bleed after serious falls or accidents ; and that rule is equally warranted by experience and prudence, the immediate shock of the injury having passed off. The great risk of hepatic injury is, in great measure, explained by the characters and the extent of the vascular sys-