Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

INFLAMMATION OF THE LIVER. 821
animal begins to ruminate, and portions of food pass through the
fourth and true stomach into the duodenum, not only is the flow of
bile into the gall-bladder stopped, but, either by some mechanical
pressure on that vessel which no one has yet explained, or, more
probably, by the sympathy which exists among all the organs of
digestion, and the influence of the great organic nerve causing the
(probably) muscular coat of the vessel to contract, the bile flows out
of its resorvoir, and proceeds to its ultimate destination, along with
the portion which continues to run directly from the liver into the
intestine, through the medium of the hepatic duct. This pear-shaped
reservoir, the gall-bladder, is placed in a depression in the posterior
face of the liver, and adheres to it by means of a delicate cellular
texture. The construction of this vessel deserves attention. It has
the same external peVitoneal coat with the viscera generally ; beneath
is a thicker coat, evidently composed of cellular substance, in which
no muscular fibres have yet been demonstratively traced, but in which
they may be well conceived to exist, and in which, doubtless, they do
exist, in order to enable the gall-bladder to contract and expel its
contents. The inner coat is a very singular one. It has not precisely
the honeycomb cells of the reticulum in miniature, but it is divided
into numerous cells of very irregular and different shapes, in the base
of which, as in the cells of the reticulum, are minute follicular glands
that secrete a mucous fluid to defend the internal surface of the gallbladder
from the acrimony of the bile which it contains.
INFLAMMATION OF THE LIVER.
Cattle, and especially those that ,are stall-fed, are subject to inflammation
of the liver. This appears evident enough on examination
after death, but the symptoms during life are exceedingly obscure,
and not to be depended upon. An almost invariable one, however,
is yellowness of the eyes and skin ; but this accompanies, or is the
chief characteristic of, obstruction of the biliary duct, and possibly
exists without the slightest inflammation of the substance of the liver.
It should also be remembered that there is scarcely any acute disease
to which cattle are subject, in -which the liver does not sympathize.
Bile is secreted in great abundance in a "healthy state of the animal,
and its secretion is very much increased under almost every intestinal
disease, on account of the sympathy which exists between the liver
and the other organs of digestion. The feeding too much on oil-cake
will produce in most cattle a yellowness of, the skin during life, and
a yellow tinge of the fat and the envelopes of the muscles after death.
In addition to the common symptoms of fever, (quickness of the
pulse, heaving, dryness of the muzzle, heat of the mouth and root of
the horn, listless or suspended rumination,) those that would lead to
the suspicion of inflammation of the liver would be, lying continually