CAUSES OF FATTY LIVER. 151 



or forms several collections in various parts of the organ. 

 This change is readily recognised by the greasy feeling 

 it occasions. A section of it appears like that of yellow 

 soap. The vessels seem pressed upon, are scarcely 

 perceptible, and the greasy deposit is divided into 

 angular masses by a coarse and compressed cellular 

 tissue. The quantity of fat deposited in the organ is 

 sometimes very great, and it sometimes exists even in 

 a fluid (oily) state. Portal, in one case, found the liver 

 quite white, and softened almost to the fluidity of melted 

 fat, where no hepatic symptoms existed during life ; he 

 also met with a similar condition of the liver in a female 

 who had suffered from a severe form of syphilis. 



CAUSES. This condition of the liver is found most 

 frequently in persons who have died of scrofulous 

 tubercles in the lungs and of cancerous maladies. In- 

 dependently, however, of tubercle, a fatty liver is deve- 

 loped in consequence of a luxurious and indolent mode 

 of living; in children who have been gorged with all 

 kinds of sweets and rich food ; and in those \vho have 

 for years indulged in dram drinking. In this case it is 

 accompanied by accumulations of fat in the omentum, 

 the mesentary, the pericardium, the heart, and the sub- 

 cutaneous cellular tissue ; by fatty degeneration of the 

 muscular fibres of the gall-bladder ; and even of the 

 muscular tissues of the heart and kidneys. The skin 

 puts on a leaden hue, the perspiration has a greasy 

 appearance and a peculiar odour, and the fat throughout 

 bears a strong resemblance to tallow or soap. The 

 WAXY liver already referred to is, in fact, a variety of the 

 FATTY liver ; it is, however, to be distinguished from the 

 latter by the colour, which resembles beeswax ; by its 



