406 



Removal of a portion of the Liver from the living human sub- 

 ject. By John Macpherson, M.D. 



The only notices that I have met with, on the subject of 

 the excision of portions of liver, are the following. 



In Blanchard's " Anatomia Practica Rationalist Amster- 

 dam, 1688, is to be found the case of a soldier, who was 

 wounded by a sword in the hepatic region ; the wound was 

 succeeded by a profuse haemorrhage and deliquium : on the 

 cessation of the haemorrhage, a morsel of the substance of the 

 liver was removed by the forceps, and the patient recovered 

 after many threatening symptoms. At the end of three years 

 he died of fever. On dissection, a small portion of the lower 

 part of the wounded lobe of the liver was observed to be 

 wanting ; the other viscera were sound.* 



Professor Dunglison quotes a case from Dieffenbaclr's Jour- 

 nal, in which a boy fell on a knife, and a portion of the liver 

 protruded. Without being aware of its nature, the surgeon 

 in attendance cut it off with his scissors : no bad effects fol- 

 lowed. Americ. Medic. Intelligencer, vol. 1, p. 191. f 



The history of the second of these cases is very imperfect, 

 and in both the portion of liver removed seems to have been 

 very small. 



I now proceed to the case which has fallen under my own 

 observation, and which appears to be the first case of the 

 kind of which a complete history has been published. 



A Hindoo, aged between 60 and 70, was in June last brought 

 in, a distance of six miles, to Howrah, with a spear wound 

 in the abdomen, about 3 inches above the umbilicus, and 2 

 inches to its right, through which a triangular portion of liver 

 protruded, of about the size and shape of the four fingers 

 of the hand, lying side by side. The wound itself did not 



* Quoted in Hennen's Military Surgery, 

 f See Beck's Medical Jurisprudence. 



