HEALTH COLUMN,

Otago Witness, Issue 2051, 15 June 1893, Page 48

HEALTH COLUMN,

A Touch of Liver.

The liver is a hard-worked organ, and generally it does its work well. It is the largest gland in the body, and is mainly concerned with the functions of digestion and nutrition, though it has other important duties. So varied and complex is its work that most people think they are safe and justified in ascribing a majority of the minor ills from which they suffer to a disordered liver. In this way it is a much maligned organ, and has many things laid to its charge of which it is wholly innocent.

Actual disease of the liver is a serious matter, but it is comparatively infrequent, and never exists alone. In this paper we are only considering those functional derangements which are popularly supposed to be the cause, and to explain the indefinite indefinable sensations which we experience when we are out of sorts. If we do not feel happy, if we worry and grumble, if we are torpid, if the days seem dreary [and long, if the weather is bad, if things go awry, it is always the liver which is at fault. It i 3 generally " sluggish " ; and many and diverse are the popular medicaments to stimulate it to the satisfactory discharge of its duties.

A very common cause of a touch of the liver is over-eating (a vice more general than, and almost aa reprehensible as, overdrinking). We eat generally out of all proportion to our work or to our needs, and take insufficient exercise, by means of which our tissue-changes become indolent and incomplete. Deleterious products become stored up in our system, and we make the liver the scapegoat. Another cause is overdrinking, actual disease following the frequent congestion of the liver due to habitual over-indulgence in alcohol. The occupation may be of too sedentary a character, and may pre-dispose to liver derangement. But even admitting that in a large number of cases a trivial irregularity in function can be proved against the liver, there is a large number of other causes which produce apparently the same symptoms. In order that we may be in a better position to discuss the question how far certain conditions of health depend upon functional disease of the liver, it will be well to consider briefly the nature of the duties which this organ performs, and what happens when a disturbance in them occurs. It is a gland— that is to say, the cells of which ifc is composed elaborate various substances, which are secreted or passed out of the cells into certain channels, or ducts. These various substances together make up a clear, goldenyellow, bitter fluid, called bile, which i 3 poured out into the alimentary canal during digestion, and which at other times is stored up in the gall-bladder. t This bile plays a most important part in the series of changes by which the food wo take is converted in its passage through the alimentary canal into forms available for the needs of the body. It is especially concerned in the digestion of fat. It is owing to this fact that people who have taken more rich, fatty food than the bile they secrete is able to digest suffer from a true bilious attack ; the liver at the same time being overtasked in its efforts to meet the demand made upon it. Nature remedies this by getting rid of the excess of food by the vomiting which is so constant a feature of bad bilious attacks.

Bile causes digestion of fat by breaking it up into very small particles, forming what is called an emulsion, just in the same way as ammonia shaken up with oil forms the emulsion so well known as hartshorn and oil. Milk may be mentioned as a natural example oO an emulsion. These small particles of fat — so small that they only look like tiny specks even when viewed under the microscope—are in some way passed through the wall of the intestine, and eventually find their way into the blood. One other important duty performed by bilo is to keep in check the ever-present and mischievous bacteria. These organisms exist plentifully in the alimentary canal; and when the flow of bile is stopped or diminished they increase and multiply. Their acticn causes,'putref active changes in the food, which leadto troublesomedisorders, while poisonous products are formed. These products, if absorbed into the blood, give rise to a host of troubles, of which the least eerious are headache, general lassitude, and depression.— Cassell's Magazine. _____

Infection fkom Kissing Animals.— The dangerous fondling and kissing of beasts cannot be effectually opposed, perhaps, on the whole ; but some persons may be benefited by the repetition of warnings against the numerous infections which that practice is liable to incur ; such as hydatids from dogs, diphtheria from cats and pigeons, and from cats the obstinate and loathsome diseases of ringworm and favus. Dr Leviseur suggests this warning in the Medical Record from having had occasion repeatedly to trace individual cases, as well as small epidemics, of both ringworm and favus to their source in the endearment of cats. He gives two recent cases, with particulars of both cat and child. Favus, he states, is a disease peculiar to mice, from which tho cat gets it. — American Analyst.

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