378 
THE VETERINARY ART IN INDIA. 
supplies it is formed by the union of the veins from almost all the 
contents of the abdomen, as from the stomach, bowels, and spleen. 
There are many reasons given for this peculiarity in the liver. 
First, the arteries would convey the blood too rapidly for such an 
extensive supply of bile as the liver produces when in an healthy 
state, which is proved by its being so liable to diseases in hot 
climates, where the blood circulates quicker from the general 
stimulus of heat. By this means the vein supplies the blood too 
rapidly, and is, perhaps, also mixed with a quantity of arterial 
blood, from which bile cannot be produced, and the consequence is 
a defect of bile both in quantity and quality. 
The vein which supplies the liver with blood for the production 
of bile has two modes of terminating. One is in innumerable 
small ducts, of which the liver is almost wholly composed, and in 
which the blood is converted to bile ; the other is in correspond- 
ing veins, which carry off the residue after the bile is produced. 
The small ducts unite as they leave the liver into one large one, 
called the hepatic, or bile duct. This duct empties itself into the 
duodenum, which is the first intestine, and where the food is 
chiefly digested. It is an obstruction in this duct which is gene- 
rally the cause of the jaundice or yellows. 
I cannot omit in this place remarking a most glaring error of 
Taplin’s, which ought not to be passed over, although at the 
commencement I wished to avoid the most distant personal re- 
flections ; yet to overlook the present instance would be false de- 
licacy, as his works were once very generally distributed and re- 
ceived, and, consequently, many of his errors adopted. 
In his chapter on the jaundice or yellows, he says “ the most sim- 
ple and least dangerous complaint passing under this denomination 
arises solely from an obstruction in the biliary ducts, or in the gall- 
bladder, situated between the two lobes of the liver, whose imme- 
diate purpose is to assist in secreting the bile from the blood, and 
promote its conveyance to the intestines, where, by its acrid and 
stimulating property, it is destined to excite the peristaltic motion, 
by which they expel their contents.” 
I must first express my astonishment that Mr. Taplin was never 
informed that the horse has no gall-bladder ; for I cannot, for a 
moment, suppose such a mistake could occur (which it does even 
in the eleventh edition of his work) to a person in the habit of 
writing from ocular proofs or observation. He must, therefore, 
have written, as all his writings prove, from his knowledge of 
anatomy, &c., in the human subject, which argues a great de- 
ficiency in the general knowledge of physic, to imagine that the 
whole animal creation must be formed with anatomical similitude. 
