700 



CHRONIC DISEASES OF THE LIVER. 



tion of the liver-structure, is not everj'-wliere alike uniformly 

 distributed. It may also in many instances be met with com- 

 bined with fatty changes, and with cirrhosis. Its relations to 

 other general and well-marked diseased conditions is in the 

 horse apparently somewhat difterent from the human subject, 

 where it is said to be a frequent attendant upon exhaustive 

 and suppurative diseases of many structures. In our patients 

 such is certainly not the case. 



Although I have observed this diseased condition in young- 

 animals, and in those advanced in years, in none could I say 

 that the clinical features were diagnostic. The most attractive 

 phenomena were persistent disturbance of the functions con- 

 nected with assimilation, a steady marasmus, and unmistakable 

 declaration of ill-health without an appreciably sufficient cause. 

 While it is also to be observed that in the development of the 

 symptoms, as distinct from what are attendant upon cirrhosis, 

 we rarely find in lardaceous liver the same interference with the 

 portal circulation, and consequently a want of the disturbance 

 in the circulation of the chylo-poietic viscera, and the rather 

 rare occurrence of abdominal dropsy, there is also an equally 

 seldom occurrence of the icteric symptoms indicative of in- 

 fringement of hepatic function, frequently enough seen in the 

 state of chronic hepatic atrophy. 



In cases when this peculiar structural change has talvcn 

 possession of the liver, we frequently observe alterations of an 

 analogous character in the other solid organs of the abdomen, 

 the spleen, and the kidneys, in this way adding to and com- 

 plicating the phenomena attendant on the more extensive 

 hepatic disorder. 



IV. Hydatid Tumours of the Liver. 



Cystoid or bladder worms, comjDaratively rare in the horse,. 

 are more frequently represented by the Ecchinococcus vetori- 

 norum, the cystic form of the Ttenia ecchinococcus, than any 

 other, Avhile it is certain that the liver is more frequently their 

 habitat than any other organ. More rarely they are met with 

 in the kidney, the spleen, or the omentum, in the brain and in 

 the lungs ; in the latter situation they are not unfrequcntly 

 found to have undergone calcitication. 



In the liver they occur as fibrous sacs enclosing a bladder or 



