NATURE OF ACUTE ATROPHY. 83 



a small quantity of grey mucus, or a turbid, pale 

 yellow, rarely brown or greenish, fluid. The stomach 

 and intestines present no important alteration of struc- 

 ture beyond here and there patches of ecchymosis ; 

 and the contents of the intestines consist either of pale, 

 dry faeces, or black tarry matter. The muscular tissue 

 of the heart is flabby and shrivelled, and its lining 

 membrane is of a jaundiced colour. The blood pre- 

 sents divers characters : sometimes it is dark violet and 

 incompletely coagulated ; at other times hard firm 

 coagulaj of fibrin separate from it, and the number of 

 white corpuscles are increased, more particularly in the 

 blood found in the right ventricle. Extravasations of 

 blood are frequently found in the mucous membrane of 

 the stomach and bowels, beneath the serous coat of the 

 ^ptestines, and between the folds of the mesentery and 

 omentum, in the retro-peritoneal areolar tissues, and 

 beneath the pleura and pericardium. The kidneys and 

 brain also are seriously involved in the destructive 

 inroads made on the general constitution by Acute 

 Atrophy of the Liver ; in the former is found deposited 

 bile pigment, fatty degeneration and granules, with a 

 flabby and shrivelled condition of its tissues ; in the 

 urine the almost total disappearance of urea, and the 

 appearance of that substance in the blood ; the occur- 

 rence of albuminuria and those remarkable products, 

 leucine and tyrosine. In the latter the brain is found 

 softened with an inordinate quantity of serum in the 

 ventricles. 



NATURE OF THE DISEASE. Acute Wasting of the 

 Liver is related to those obscure and, to many, un- 

 fathomable processes, as to the nature of which various 



