The enlarged cirrhotic liver / by Arthur Foxwell.

  • Foxwell, William Arthur.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The enlarged cirrhotic liver / by Arthur Foxwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    PREFACE The raison d'ttre of this little book is my conviction that an undue amount of uncertainty and difficulty surrounds the physical determination of the liver's condition in cirrhosis, especially of that form due to alcohol; and these essays are an endeavour on my part to make this diagnosis more easy and sure. There is nothing sni generis in the cirrhosis resulting from alcohol: the anatomical nature of the deposit is identical with that occurring in other forms though its ]>roportionate distri- bution throughout the lobule is naturally dififerent from what occurs when the hepatic vein or bile duct acts as the conduit of the materies morbi. Clinically, the alcoholic, as well as the other forms, is characterised by an enlargement of the organ, those cases where diminution is noted being quite the excep- tion. It is true that contraction when it does occur means an advanced stage of disease \ but even in the severest forms enlargement remains the rule. In the early stage the increase in size is chiefly owing to active or passive congestion and, in a small degree only, to the pathological deposits of fibroid tissue. But when the disease is advanced this fibroid tissue forms the bulk of the enlargement and more than compensates for the loss in size resulting from wasting of the parenchyma. During the last six years I have recorded the size of the liver m 202 private patients, in whom I suspected it was diseased. In 7 of the 202 I have noted that the liver was small; in 90 that Its size was unchanged ; and in 105 that it was larger than usual. That is, in more than half the cases where I suspected the liver to be involved in ihc diseased condition of the body I