The liver is situated on the right side of the body under the diaphragm. The convex surface is protected, on the right by the six or seven lower ribs, and in front by the cartilages of the same, and by the ensiform cartilage, the diaphragm of course being interposed.
To the left of the longitudinal fissure the liver is in contact with the pyloric extremity and anterior surface of the stomach, on which it moves freely. When the stomach is quite empty, the left part of this surface of the liver may overlap the cardiac end of that organ. To the right of the longitudinal fissure the liver rests upon the first part of the duodenum and the hepatic flexure of the colon. Farther back it is in contact with the upper part of the right kidney and suprarenal capsule.
The two blood-vessels which supply the liver are the hepatic artery and the vena porta. The hepatic vein conveys the blood away from the liver.
The lymphatics of the liver are large and numerous, forming a deep and a superficial set.
The nerves are derived partly from the cœliac plexus and partly from the pneumogastric nerve, especially from the left pneumogastric.
The excretory apparatus of the liver consists of the hepatic duct, the cystic duct, gall bladder, and common bile duct.
The hepatic duct is formed by the union of a right and left branch, which issue from the bottom of the transverse fissure and unite at a very obtuse angle; it descends to the right, within the gastro-hepatic omentum. Its diameter is nearly two lines, and its length nearly two inches. At its lower end it meets the cystic descending from the gall bladder, and the ducts uniting together at an angle form the common bile duct.
The cystic duct is about one and a half inches in length.
The gall bladder is a pear-shaped membranous sac, three or four inches long, about an inch and a half across its widest part, and capable of containing from 8 to 12 fluid drachms. The gall bladder is attached to the liver. The neck, gradually narrowing, becoming constricted, bends downward, and terminates in the cystic duct.
The common bile duct (ductus communis choledicus), the largest of the ducts, being from two to three lines in width, and nearly three inches long, conveys the bile from the liver and the gall bladder into the duodenum by a common orifice, with the pancreatic duct on its inner surface, about three to four inches below the pylorus.