Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... ON GALL-STONES AND DISEASES OE THE BILE-DUCTS CHAPTER I THE BILE-DUCTS AND THE BILE In every chemical industry there are waste products, and great ingenuity is often exercised in order that they may be disposed of easily, economically, and, as a rule, with a minimum amount of annoyance to those engaged in the manufactory. Every organ in the body of an animal may be regarded as a chemical factory, and the waste product may be a gas (carbon dioxide), or a fluid (urine), or solid matter (feces). The greatest of all the laboratories in the bodies of vertebrata is the liver, for it receives the blood conveyed to it by the portal vein, which is charged with the products of digestion, such as carbohydrates, and various proteids which it obtains from the gastro-intestinal tract. Experimental physiology has taught us that the chief function of the liver is the production of a peculiar substance termed "glycogen/' whilst bile appears as a waste or excrementitious product. As surgeons we are not particularly concerned with glycogen, although it is a substance of the most profound interest to the physician in regard to the disease known as diabetes; but physicians and surgeons are often concerned with irregularities connected with the escape of the bile, which takes place by means of an elaborate system of passages which arise in the recesses of the liver and convey the bile from its source in the hepatic cells to be discharged into the duodenum. A large amount of ingenious histologic investigation has been expended with the hope of determining the exact manner in which the bile-passages come into relation with the hepatic cells: although the matter has not been precisely determined, it is quite certain that they arise in the most intimate...
