AZOTURIA. 
25 
liver arrests and is constantly transforming toxic products. The 
comparative toxicity of the portal and hepatic blood demon¬ 
strates that its poisoning has no time to be produced. The ani¬ 
mal appears to succumb to an intestinal hypersemia, and conse¬ 
quent cerebral congestion, in some cases. Prof. Leonard Pear¬ 
son, of the University of Pennsylvania, some six years ago, 
called my attention to a gray gelding at that institution on 
which he had held an autopsy, which disclosed the liver fatty 
degenerated, kidney very much congested, and lungs congested, 
and the entire alimentary canal in a badly congested condition. 
The owner of this animal said that the animal had left the .sta¬ 
ble in apparently sound health three hours before its death. 
I think we may, therefore, conclude that the liver is an or¬ 
gan of protection to the animal, that it arrests more or less 
toxic material in general, not the whole, as a part passes into 
the urine. 
While it is admitted that the liver is not the only agent 
which acts the part of a protector to the organism against poi¬ 
sons, there may yet be made to intervene as an auxiliary agent of 
protection, rapidity of intestinal expulsion by the stools. Harden¬ 
ing of the intestinal contents, which, transformed into a hard 
faecal mass, becomes almost inoffensive, because it no longer al¬ 
lows of absorption. We have a hurtful constipation, and from 
this the nervous system is made to suffer and the theory of re¬ 
flexes occurs. 
Continued unusual pressure produces excessive activity of 
the nerve supplying the part, excitability is Anally abolished, 
and the exhausting of the nerve occurs locally, as in over-dis¬ 
tension of the bladder. A constantly overloaded condition of 
the bowels may produce either of these local results on the 
nerve fllaments themselves. This effect travels backward to the 
controlling ganglia in the lumbar cord, and, defecation being 
essentially a reflex act when its directing centre is not sensitive 
to the controlling impulse of the brain, does not occur promptly, 
and the constipation thus reacts upon the whole system. This 
produces one of those cases of azotnria that is invariably fatal. 
