1048 



THE ORGANS OF DIGESTION. 



brighter tone, due to the milk diet, and in later years may assume other shades, 

 due to pathological changes. After death it may be red-brown at one place, 

 yellow at another, with all variations ; sometimes the colors occur in wavy lines. 

 This means only unequal repletion of the vessels. The liver possesses no shape 

 peculiar to itself. Like the lachrymal, or parotid gland, or pancreas, it is 

 moulded to neighboring organs. Its general contour, how : ever, is wedge-shaped, 

 with the base to the right. Many compare it to the upper section of an ovoid 



cut by a plane passing from below 

 upward to the left (Fig. 664). The 

 right end is thick and the left end 

 thin. 



The various surfaces ascribed to 

 the liver are from two to five, result- 

 ing from the method of observation. 

 A pathological, bloodless, decayed 

 liver placed on the dissecting table 

 as usually seen by the student, Avill 

 always have two surfaces. It does 

 not follow that that liver shows 

 anything of its normal appearance 

 FIG. 664,-Figure to illustrate the shape of the liver. during life. The inferior vena cava 



d 



of this liver is horizontal on its 



inferior surface, yet we know that vessel runs vertically along the spinal column. 

 A liver removed from the body and injected does not give the correct form. 

 Hardening in situ by chromic acid or formalin injections leaves the shape of the 

 viscera as in life. The liver treated thus shows three surfaces, a superior, infe- 

 rior, and posterior ; an anterior border, a right, and a left extremity. That which 

 was formerly called the posterior blunt margin is now seen to be a posterior 

 surface. Symington regards the shape of the liver as that "of a right-angled 

 triangular prism, and describes five surfaces, right basal or lateral, anterior, 

 superior, posterior, and inferior. 



The convex, upper, smooth surface of the liver is subdivided by a sagittal fold 

 of peritoneum drawn down from the diaphragm, called the suspensory, broad, or 



Gull-bladder 



Left lateral 

 ligament 



Vena cava inferior 

 FIG. 665. Superior surface of the liver. Drawn from His' models. 



falciform ligament. To its right is a Lirger, broader convex lobe, and on the 

 left a smaller, more slender, flatter lobe (Fig. 665). This broad ligament corre- 

 sponds on the under concave surface of the liver to the left longitudinal fissure 



