.. i6o.] STRUCTURE OF THE LOBULES. 343 



In the human liver, the connective tissue accompanying the vena 

 portse between the hepatic islets, is very scanty, and there are 

 neither sheaths around the individual islets, nor any complete en- 

 closure of them by the vessels. In cirrhosis hepatis, on the other 

 hand, the connective tissue of the liver-parenchyma increases exces- 

 sively, and the individual secerning segments may then appear more 

 distinctly, or be quite separated into true lobules. The reddish- 

 brown hepatic substance is softer, because it is more macerated, 

 and sinks in at the surface and upon sections more than the rest; 

 it can also be more readily scraped away, and in fine sections falls 

 out from the surrounding structure with facility. The cortical 

 substance, which surrounds, in a reticulated manner, the reddish- 

 brown spots, presents narrower portions (fissures interlobular es, 

 Kiernan), and broader angular ones (spatia interlobular ia), in 

 which a red point, occasioned by a branch of the portal vein, may 

 not unfrequently be seen, yet not so regularly as in the brown 

 places, where it arises from the vena intralobularis, and frequently 

 appears star-shaped. From the greater congestion of the capil- 

 lary network, it may happen, and, according to The He, this is the 

 rule in the majority of healthy human livers, that the fissures 

 interlobulares disappear, and the brown substance appears in the 

 form of a network, and the yellow in that of isolated spots. I find 

 that, as already mentioned, perfectly fresh livers are mostly coloured 

 uniformly. Kiernan describes, in the liver of children, a reversal 

 of the colouring, which he attributes to a congested state of the 

 vena portse, so that the outer parts of the hepatic lobules are 

 more injected. Neither Theile nor I have directed our attention 

 to this form.* 



§ 1 60. Hepatic Cells and Hepatic Cell Networks. — Each hepatic 

 islet contains two elements: 1. a network of capillaries, which is 

 connected, on the one hand, with the finest brauches of the 

 portal vein, and on the other, collects its blood into its central 

 vein, one of the commencements of the hepatic veins; and 2. a 

 meslncork of delicate trabecules, which consist solely of cells closely 

 and continuously joined to one another, the hepatic cells, as they 

 are termed. These two networks are so interwoven with one 

 another, that the interspaces of the one are completely filled up by 

 the parts of the other ; and there exist, at least when the vessels 



* According to L. Beule, the lobules of the liver of the pig are each pro- 

 vided with a separate fibrous capsule of its own, so that each partition 

 between two lobules would be formed by two membranes, united by connective 

 le. 



