FOREIGN BODIES IN THE LIVER.
In horse: spikes of leguminosæ, barley awns. Symptoms: of internal hemorrhage, pallor, weakness, vertigo, death; jaundice, prostration, stupor, weakness, crossing of fore limbs, tender right hypochondrium. In cattle: bodies passing from rumen. In swine, sand. In dog, sharp bodies from stomach. Treatment: laparotomy.
Foreign bodies are rare in the liver in our domestic animals. Horse. St. Cyr has found the spikes of leguminosæ and Megnin the beards of barley. St. Cyr believed that he traced the passage followed by the stalk through the walls of the duodenum, and portal vein where it divided to be distributed through the liver. At the point of supposed entrance the walls of the vena portæ were thickened and its lumen filled with clots. The further course of the portal vein and its branches showed similar thickening and clots, and on the branch leading to the right lobe was a large abscess containing 4 decilitres of pus. Clots extended into the splenic, omental and mesenteric veins, and between the folds of the mesentery of the small intestine were a number of minute ruptures and blood extravasations.
Megnin found traces of the passage of the barley beards through the gastric walls and into the substance of the liver close to the portal fissure. Around the centre where the barbs were implanted there was an irregular hæmorrhagic extravasation in the liver, and in the abdominal cavity an effusion of 8 or 10 quarts of blood.
Symptoms. In such a case the only definite symptoms are those of internal hemorrhage, pallor of the mucous membranes, gradually increasing weakness, vertigo, unsteady gait, and an early death. In more protracted cases slight jaundice, dullness, prostration, stupor, drooping of head, ears and eyelids, resting it on the manger or walls, muscular weakness, crossing of the front limbs, and it may be tenderness on percussion on the right side of the chest posteriorly. It resembles the coma or immobility of the horse but the patient backs more easily.
Cattle. In ruminants sharp pointed bodies passing from the rumen will occasionally penetrate the liver, and give rise to symptoms of hepatic disorder. Augenheister found in a cow dilatation of the larger bile ducts, which contained about 10 quarts of sand, that had apparently entered from the duodenum by the common bile duct which had an orifice of an inch in diameter.
Pig. The gall ducts of a pig’s liver, in the Veterinary College of Berlin contains a large amount of sand (Gurlt).
Dog. The liver is exceptionally perforated by sharp pointed bodies coming from the stomach. Cadeac and Blanc report three cases of needle in the liver. Blanc’s case had been killed because of old age; one of Cadeac’s showed symptoms resembling rabies.
Treatment of these cases would be very hopeless as nothing short of laparotomy and the removal of the foreign body would promise success.