,
weighing in a healthy adult from three to four pounds. It secretes the
bile. Its cells also store up, "in the form of a kind of animal starch
called glycogen," excess of starchy or sugary food absorbed from the
intestine during the digestion of a meal. This it gradually doles out to
the blood for general use by the organs of the body until the next meal
is eaten.

Dr. William Hargreaves says:--

"The office of the liver is to take up new substances having
not yet become blood, as well as the portions of integrated
matter that can be worked over, and brought again into use. It
is in fact the economist of the system. It excretes bile, and
liver-sugar, and _renews_ the _blood_. When the liver is
disordered the whole body is more or less deranged and the
proper nutrition of its parts arrested."

Dr. Alfred Carpenter says:--

"The liver has to do several things; a considerable part of its
duty is to purify the blood from _debris_ (waste matter), to
filter out some things, to break up and alter others, and to
expel them from the body in the form of bile. There are certain
diseases in which the liver suddenly declines to do any more
work. Acute atrophy of the liver is the name of this condition,
and when it arises death rapidly results from suppression of the
secretion of bile. It brings about a state of things called
_acholia_; the patient is actually poisoned by the non-removal
of those ingredients from the blood which it is the duty of the
liver to remove. This corresponds in effect to the condition
which alcohol can bring about by slow degrees."

The liver is the first important organ, next to the stomach and bowels,
to receive the poisonous influence of alcohol.

"If alcohol is used habitually, though only in small quantities
at a time, the liver may become the seat of serious changes.
There may be a great increase of fat deposited in the cells,
producing what is called 'fatty liver,' or it may lead to a
great increase of connective tissue (membrane) between the
cells, and surrounding the blood-vessels. This newly-developed
connective tissue gradually contracts, and in so doing crushes
the cells and obstructs the blood-vessels, making the organ much
smaller than natural, and causing the surface to be covered with
little projecting knobs, consisting of portions of liver-tissue
that have been le