HISTORY OF THE LIVER. 99 



century, records the case of a lawyer who, after having 

 suffered for a long time from symptoms of " obstruction 

 of the liver," died suddenly while sitting at table. A 

 post-mortem revealed the trunk of the portal vein torn, 

 the abdominal cavity filled with blood, and the liver 



HARD and ATROPHIED. 



Nicolas Tulph, of Amsterdam, another eminent 

 physician and patriot, at about the same era, found 

 on opening the body of a man, who had suffered from 

 Ascites, and Tympanitis, and who had passed blood 

 upwards and downwards, the spleen enlarged, and the 

 liver HARD and SHRIVELLED. 



John Baptist Morgagni, an Italian physician of 

 great renown in his period the " sixteenth century," re- 

 cords several cases of the same kind, partly from his 

 own observations, and partly from the works of Posth, 

 Wepfer, and Ruysch. 



With regard to the nature and character of the 

 disease, various conflicting opinions have been ad- 

 vanced by different authors. Morgagni looked upon 

 the external nodulated surface of the organ as the 

 formation of a new deposit tubercles ; Matthew Baillie 

 and Meckel fell into the same error. Lawrence, who 

 was the first to give it the name of Cirrhosis 

 from the Greek (kirros Yellow) also enunciates the 

 same view that the nodules were new formations, 

 which might be developed in other organs as well, 

 and which, like other new formations, might undergo 

 softening. 



In 1826, Bouillaud endeavoured to prove that no new 

 formation existed, and that the yellow granulations 

 consisted in the disorganization of the glandular paren- 



