84 NATURE OF ACUTE ATROPHY. 



opinions have been advanced. The simple fact of the 

 disappearance in a few days, or may be in a few hours, 

 of one-half or one-third of a large organ of the body, 

 abounding as it does in blood, without the slightest al- 

 teration in the blood-channels leading to it, is one of 

 those extraordinary phenomena which has no analogy 

 in any other known disease. 



Rokitansky, of Vienna, in 1852, was about the first 

 pathologist to give us an accurate description of the 

 anatomy of this affection, who regards the process as 

 one of bilious liquefaction, caused by the excess of the 

 elements of bile, formed in the blood of the portal vein, 

 which, becoming separated, permeates the whole vascu- 

 lar apparatus of the liver, and causes the destruction of 

 the glandular substances by liquefaction. 



Henocli assumes it to be a case of true polycholia, in 

 consequence of which till the excretory ducts become 

 distended with secretion, and compress the blood-vessels ; 

 hence arises a considerable impairment in the nutrition 

 of the hepatic cells, which ultimately leads to their dis- 

 integration by fatty degeneration. 



Von Dusch maintains that the disease proceeds from 

 paralysis of the bile-ducts and lymphatic vessels, which 

 gives rise to an infiltration of the organ with bile, and 

 through this to a solution of the cells. 



Buhl regards the disease as analogous to typhus, and 

 the disintegration of the hepatic cells he attributes to 

 the same cause as the concomitant haemorrhage, namely, 

 to the marked weakening of the heart's action, and to 

 the rapid decrease of the peripheric metamorphosis of 

 matter ; and the changes which the liver undergoes in 

 typhus, pyaemia, and other blood-poisoning diseases, are 



