508 
PROFESSOR SIMONDS’S LECTURE. 
The Chairman briefly introduced the lecturer. 
Professor SlMONDS, on rising, was received with cheers. We 
have only room for a very condensed report of his lecture. 
He commenced by observing, that, acting in accordance with his 
established custom, he should not presume to intrude on their time 
by the introduction of any remarks not having immediate reference 
to the subject of his lecture : he should therefore proceed at once 
to consider the structure and functions of the liver, with as much 
of its pathology as was practicable in addressing agriculturists. 
The disease on which he should chiefly dwell was that usually 
known by the name of the rot in sheep. 
The liver was of one the most important organs in the animal 
economy. The food of animals, after having undergone certain 
changes in the stomach, becomes what anatomists designate a chy- 
mous mass. In this condition it passes from the stomach into the 
intestinal canal, where it is mingled with two particular fluids ; 
one the pancreatic juice, which is secreted by an organ called the 
pancreas ; the other prepared by the liver, and named the bile. 
It was the combined action of those two fluids on the chymous 
mass that produced the important changes which it underwent 
within the intestinal canal. Anatomists had given a vast deal of 
attention to the functions of the liver ; but before speaking of these, 
and more particularly of the secretion of bile, he would take a rapid 
sketch of the anatomy of the organ. The liver was the largest 
organ belonging to that class designated glands ; but it differed 
from all other glands, inasmuch as the fluid which it elaborated 
was produced, not from arterial but from venous blood — the most 
impure in the body — and thus, in this case, a secretion essential to 
the maintenance of health was produced from an impure material. 
The organ differed in size in various animals. [The Professor 
referred to diagrams, which shewed that the liver was much larger 
in the dog than in the herbivorous class.] Most of them were 
aware that large cavities existed in animals; that the one which 
contained the heart and lungs was named the chest, and that the 
abdomen was separated from it by a membranous partition usually 
called the diaphragm. It was in this latter cavity, the abdomen, 
that the liver was situated : but it also contained various other 
organs, and in order, therefore, more accurately to define the posi- 
tion of these, anatomists divided the abdomen by imaginary lines 
into different regions. [He referred to a diagram, shewing the 
divisions, by certain transverse and longitudinal lines.] Dividing 
it transversely, the upper or anterior portion of the abdomen was 
occupied by the right and the left hypochondriac ; the central by 
the right and the left lumbar ; and the lower or posterior by the 
right and the left iliac; whilst the longitudinal lines denoted the 
