THE BILE. 



93 



liver among the rest, to be mere ducts, beginning from blind 

 extremities, and having blood-vessels ramifying on their parietes, 

 The biliferous ducts, therefore, are not continuous, as Blumenbach 

 says, with blood-vessels ; and Haller remarks, that no one ever 

 discovered such a continuation : but their fluids must be poured 

 into them from their inner surface, as fluids are secreted into canals 

 lined by mucous membrane. 



Mr. Kiernan has recently published a most elaborate and ori- 

 ginal paper upon the structure of the liver, and states, That the 

 extreme subdivisions of the hepatic artery all terminate in, or 

 become, veins that run into the branches of the vena portae; so 

 that this vein originates not only from the veins of the other 

 abdominal viscera, but also in the liver itself, as Ferrein pointed 

 out a century ago, and the artery has no termination in either 

 biliferous ducts or hepatic veins, and is destined for nutrition, 

 not for the secretion of bile. That the subdivisions of the 

 vena portce (except, I presume, those which become secreting 

 vessels in the coats of the minutest biliferous ducts, and pour 

 forth fluid from their extremities upon the inner surface of 

 those ducts, unless indeed the fluid pass through pores in their 

 sides,) all terminate in, or become, the hepatic veins: That 

 the minutest biliferous ducts, the subdivisions of the vena portae, 

 and the hepatic veins, are conglomerated into minute masses or 

 lobules, which Wepfer first discovered in the pig, surrounded, ex- 

 cept at their base, with a capsule of cellular membrane, that is a 

 prolongation of Glisson's capsule and the proper capsule of the 

 liver, and supplied with minute arteries, and probably nerves and 

 absorbents ; when there is much cellular membrane in the capsule, 

 the lobules not being close together, but touching each other by 

 two or three points only, and being more or less circular or oval ; 

 when the reverse is the case, being closely 

 compacted, and therefore angular : 



r \ \ v \ \ / That the branches of the vena portae, after 

 running between the lobules, and cover- 

 ing them ( except at their bases ) and freely 

 anastomosing around them, so as to form 

 , - _ a continued plexus throughout the liver, 



enter the lobulesmost minutely subdivided, 

 and become hepatic veins, which unite into 

 one large vessel in each process of every 

 lobule, and then these large vessels run into one which passes 



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