CHAPTER VI. 



THE LIVER. 



THE liver, which is the largest organ of the body, stands in 

 close relationship to the blood-forming organs. The importance 

 of this organ in the physiological composition of the blood is evi- 

 dent from the fact that the blood coming from the digestive tract, 

 laden with absorbed bodies, must circulate through the liver before 

 it is driven by the heart through the different organs and tissues. 

 It has been proved, at least for the carbohydrates, that an assimila- 

 tion of the absorbed nutritive bodies which are brought to the 

 liver by the blood of the portal vein takes place in this organ. 

 The occurrence of synthetical processes in the liver has been posi- 

 tively proved by special observations. It is possible that in the liver 

 certain ammonia combinations are converted into urea or uric acid 

 (in birds), while certain products of putrefaction in the intestines, 

 such as phenol, may be converted by synthesis into ethereal sul- 

 phuric acids by the liver (PFLUGER and KOCHS). The liver has 

 also the property of removing and retaining heterogeneous bodies 

 from the blood, and this is not only true of metallic salts, which are 

 often retained by this organ, but also, as SCHIFF, LAUTENBERGER, 

 JACQUES, HEGER, and ROGER have shown, the alkaloids are re- 

 tained and are probably partially decomposed in the liver. 



Even though the liver is of assimilatory importance and purifies 

 the blood coming from the digestive tract, it is at the same time a 

 secretory organ which eliminates a specific secretion, the bile, in 

 the production of which the red blood-corpuscles are destroyed, or 

 at least one of their constituents, the haemoglobin, is transformed. 

 It is generally admitted that the liver acts contrariwise during foatal 

 life, at that time forming the red blood-corpuscles. 



185 



