160 LECTURE VI. 



sessed by the organ of forming bile will at the same time 

 continually become more limited. We cannot conceive 

 a liver without liver-cells ; they are, as far as we know, 

 the really active elements, since even in cases in which 

 the supply of blood has become limited owing to obstruc- 

 tion in the portal vein, the hepatic cells are able to pro- 

 duce bile, although perhaps not in the same quantity. 



This fact derives peculiar value from its occurrence in 

 the liver, because the matters which constitute the bile 

 do not, as is well known, exist pre-formed in the blood, 

 and we must therefore suppose the constituents of the 

 bile to arise not by a process of simple secretion, but by 

 one of actual formation in the liver. This question has, 

 as you are aware, recently become invested with a still 

 greater degree of interest in consequence of the observa- 

 tion of Bernard that the property of producing sugar is 

 also inherent in these elements, whereby the blood is 

 supplied upon so gigantic a scale with a substance which 

 has the most decided influence upon the internal meta- 

 morphic processes and upon the production of heat. If, 

 therefore, we speak of the action of the liver, we can, 

 both in regard to the formation of sugar as well as that 

 of bile, mean nothing but the action of its individual ele- 

 ments (cells), an action which consists in their attracting 

 matters from the passing current of blood, in their effect- 

 ing within their cavity a transmutation of these matters, 

 and returning them in this transmuted form either to 

 the blood, or yielding them up to the bile-ducts in the 

 shape of bile. 



Now I demand for cellular pathology nothing more 

 than that this view, which must be admitted to be true 

 in the case of the large secreting organs, be extended also 

 to the smaller organs and smaller elements ; and that, for 

 example, an epidermis-cell, a lens-fibre or a cartilage-cell 

 be, to a certain extent, admitted to possess the power of 



