Zoonomia; Or, the Laws of Organic Life, Vol. I

by Erasmus Darwin

Where these bile-stones are too large to pass, and the bile-ducts possess their sensibility, this becomes a very painful and hopeless disease. I made the following experiments with a view to their chemical solution.

Some fragments of the same bile-stone were put into the weak spirit of marine salt, which is sold in the shops, and into solution of mild alcali; and into a solution of caustic alcali; and into oil of turpentine; without their being dissolved. All these mixtures were after some time put into a heat of boiling water, and then the oil of turpentine dissolved its fragments of bile-stone, but no alteration was produced upon those in the other liquids except some change of their colour.

Some fragments of the same bile-stone were put into vitriolic æther, and were quickly dissolved without additional heat. Might not æther mixed with yolk of egg or with honey be given advantageously in bilious concretions?

I have in two instances seen from 30 to 50 bile-stones come away by stool, about the size of large peas, after having given six grains of calomel in the evening, and four ounces of oil of almonds or olives on the succeeding morning. I have also given half a pint of good olive or almond oil as an emetic during the painful fit, and repeated it in half an hour, if the first did not operate, with frequent good effect.

[4]. Another disease of the liver, which I have several times observed, consists in the inability or paralysis of the secretory vessels. This disease has generally the same cause as the preceding one, the too frequent potation of spirituous liquors, or the too sudden omission of them, after the habit is confined; and is greater or less in proportion, as the whole or a part of the liver is affected, and as the inability or paralysis is more or less complete.

This palsy of the liver is known from these symptoms, the patients have generally passed the meridian of life, have drank fermented liquors daily, but perhaps not been opprobrious drunkards; they lose their appetite, then their flesh and strength diminish in consequence, there appears no bile in their stools, nor in their urine, nor is any hardness or swelling perceptible on the region of the liver. But what is peculiar to this disease, and distinguishes it from all others at the first glance of the eye, is the bombycinous colour of the skin, which, like that of full-grown silkworms, has a degree of transparency with a yellow tint not greater than is natural to the serum of the blood.

Mr. C. and Mr. B. both very strong men, between 50 and 60 years of age, who had drank ale at their meals instead of small beer, but were not reputed hard-drinkers, suddenly became weak, lost their appetite, flesh, and strength, with all the symptoms above enumerated, and died in about two months from the beginning of their malady. Mr. C. became anasarcous a few days before his death, and Mr. B. had frequent and great hæmorrhages from an issue, and some parts of his mouth, a few days before his death. In both these cases calomel, bitters and chalybeates were repeatedly used without effect.

One of the patients described above, Mr. C, was by trade a plumber; both of them could digest no food, and died apparently for want of blood. Might not the transfusion of blood be used in these cases with advantage?

[5]. When the paralysis of the hepatic glands is less complete, or less universal, a schirrosity of some part of the liver is induced; for the secretory vessels retaining some of their living power take up a fluid from the circulation, without being sufficiently irritable to carry it forwards to their excretory ducts; hence the body, or receptacle of each gland, becomes inflated, and this distension increases, till by its very great stimulus inflammation is produced, or till those parts of the viscus become totally paralytic. This disease is distinguishable from the foregoing by the palpable hardness or largeness of the liver; and as the hepatic glands are not totally paralytic, or the whole liver not affected, some bile continues to be made. The inflammations of this viscus, consequent to the schirrosity of it, belong to the diseases of the sensitive motions, and will be treated of hereafter.

[6]. The ancients are said to have possessed an art of increasing the livers of geese to a size greater than the remainder of the goose. Martial. l. 13. epig. 58.—This is said to have been done by fat and figs. Horace, l. 2. sat. 8.—Juvenal sets these large livers before an epicure as a great rarity. Sat. 5. l. 114; and Persius, sat. 6. l. 71. Pliny says these large goose-livers were soaked in mulled milk, that is, I suppose, milk mixed with honey and wine; and adds, "that it is uncertain whether Scipio Metellus, of consular dignity, or M. Sestius, a Roman knight, was the great discoverer of this excellent dish." A modern traveller, I believe Mr. Brydone, asserts that the art of enlarging the livers of geese still exists in Sicily; and it is to be lamented that he did not import it into his native country, as some method of affecting the human liver might perhaps have been collected from it; besides the honour he might have acquired in improving our giblet pies.