55 Clinical Lectures, loc. cit.
56 Archiv f. path. Anat., Band xxii. p. 426.
57 Baer, Der Alcoholismus, Berlin, 1878, p. 62 et seq.
58 Virchow's Archiv, vol. xv. p. 281; also, Lancereaux, A Treatise on Syphilis, Syd. Soc. ed.
59 Memoirs of the Sanitary Commission, medical volume.
J. Wickham Legg60 and Charcot61 nearly simultaneously discovered that obstruction of the bile-ducts, if continued a sufficient length of time, sets up a hyperplasia of the connective tissue of the liver. The evidence is pathological and experimental. Thus, Legg has seen a liver markedly cirrhotic in a case where a small cancer of the duodenum completely obstructed the flow of bile into the intestine.62 By tying the common duct in dogs it was found that a hyperplasia of the connective tissue very soon occurred, and this was followed, of course, by contraction of the new tissue and atrophy of the hepatic cells. Closure of the hepatic vein has the same effect, and also, as Solowieff63 has asserted, closure of the portal vein; on the other hand, by Frerichs and others the closure of the portal is attributed to the sclerosis.
60 On the Bile, Jaundice, etc., loc. cit., p. 351 et seq.
61 Leçons sur les Maladies du Foie, etc., p. 231 et seq.
62 On the Bile, Jaundice, etc., loc. cit., p. 355.
63 Arch. f. path. Anat., etc., Band lxii. p. 195.