126 CAUSES OF HEPATIC ABSCESS. 



work on the structure and diseases of the liver. He 

 injected two drachms of quicksilver into the crural 

 vein of a dog : at the end of twenty-four hours the animal 

 became feverish ; at the end of two or three days he 

 had cough and difficulty in breathing, which continued 

 till his death. On a post-mortem examination, per- 

 formed by the doctor, he found the lungs studded with 

 small hard tubercles and small circumscribed absce 

 and in the centre of each was found a globule of the 

 quicksilver. Here the globules of mercury, like the 

 globules of pus in the diseases which I shall immedi- 

 ately refer to as CAUSES, become arrested in the 

 capillary vessels of the Inn^s, and often in the liver, 

 and each globule, acting by mere mechanical irritation, 

 excites inflammation and abscess. 



The chief causes attributed to pyaemic abscesses in 

 the liver have been traced 



To ulceration of the stomach and intestines ; to ul- 

 ceration of the gall-bladder and biliary ducts ; to 

 dysentery, fissures in tin ,md internal fistula-; 



to operations for fistula in aim: to inflammation of 

 the portal vein following eauteri/:ition of the rectum 

 for piles, fissures, or polypi ; to the operation for 

 strangulated hernia, and to capital operations of the 

 lower extivt All these may be set down as 



primary causes, from which it may be inferred that in 

 the progress of ulceration, phlebitis of the capillary 

 veins of the bowels occurs, and that the matter thus 

 formed in these veins passes with the blood into the 

 portal circulation, where (like the quicksilver) it 

 irritates and inflames the minute ramifications of the 

 portal vessels and minute structure of the liver, giving 



