Book 1
15
It is formed not only from a cause connected with the liver, as certain physicians have supposed, but also from the stomach, the spleen, the kidneys, and the colon. From the liver in this manner: if the liver become inflamed or contract scirrhus, but remain unchanged with regard to its functional office, it produces bile, indeed, in the liver, and the bladder, which is in the liver, secretes it; but if the passages which convey the bile to the intestine, be obstructed from inflammation or scirrhus, the bladder gets over-distended, and the bile regurgitates; it therefore becomes mixed with the blood, and the blood, passing over the whole system, carries the bile to every part of the body, which acquires the appearance of bile. But the hardened fæces are white and clayey, as not being tinged with bile, because the bowels are deprived of this secretion. Hence also the belly is very much dried up; for it is neither moistened nor stimulated by the bile. The colour in this species is whitish-green.
15
If jaundice make its appearance in connection with the spleen, it is dark-green, for its nutriment is black, because the spleen is the strainer of the black blood, the impurities of which it does not receive nor elaborate when diseased, but they are carried all over the body with the blood. Hence patients are dark-green from icterus in connection with the spleen; but the colour is darker than usual in the customary discharges from the bowels, for the superfluity of the nutriment of the spleen becomes recrement from the bowels.
