GLANDS. 133 



the secretion of sugar, and the other (a tubular gland) 

 in the secretion of bile. The physiology of the liver, 

 so well established by M. Claude Bernard, as well as 

 its comparative anatomy, entirely justify this view. 



The mode of origin of the radicles of the hepatic 

 duct has been the object of varied researches,, and the 

 number of theories which have been proposed in 

 explanation of it are evidence of the uncertainty 

 which surrounds the subject. We have admitted 

 that the liver is made up of two distinct glands, 

 because, as we have already said, both physiology and 

 comparative anatomy unite to prove it, and we have 

 described the radicles of the hepatic ducts as tubes 

 terminating in blind extremities, because we have 

 witnessed this fact twice in a cirrhotic liver, and we 

 know that Professor Kiiss* had already observed the 

 same several years since in a syphilitic liver.f 



* Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the Faculty of Strasbourg, 

 France.^.) 



t It will be observed that our author, in his very succinct account of 

 the minute anatomy of the liver, makes no allusion to the labors of Kier- 

 nan, Lereboullet, or Beale, an omission which cannot be fairly over- 

 looked. These authors throw too much light upon the mueh-debated 

 question of the mode of origin of the radicles of the hepatic duct to be 

 passed over in silence. The best supported opinion on this subject at the 

 present day is not that the radicles of the hepatic ducts are merely tubes 

 terminating in blind extremities, as stated in the text, but that these 

 radicles take their origin from a Mliary plexus or network of tubes, ana- 

 logous to the network of blood-vessels in the interior of the hepatic 

 lobule, and occupying its interstices. Kiernan first described and figured 

 this " biliary plexus" in his admirable paper on u the Anatomy and Phy- 

 siology of the Liver," in the Philosophical Transactions, London, 1843, 

 (part 1st, p. 741, and PI. XXIII. fig. III). His figure, however, is dia- 

 grammatic, and not taken from nature. It has been reproduced in most 

 of the works on Descriptive Anatomy of the present day. 



I* 1853, M. Lereboullet published a prize essay, in Paris, u on the Mi- 



