Inflammation of the portal branches within the liver, and their adhesive inflammation, resulting in obliteration, are not of uncommon occurrence, as will be seen from the following remarks:

We not unfrequently find, at different spots within the liver, more or less widely diffused accumulations of a callous (cellulo-fibrous) tissue, generally of an irregular, ramifying form, and, as a careful examination shows us, following an obliterated branch of the portal vein. In the obliterated vessel we sometimes find a yellow, cheesy, chalky, or mortarlike inspissated plug - the remains of a fibrinous coagulum, closing the inflamed vein. When these callosities are of considerable size and number, and especially when they are on or near the surface of the liver, this organ undergoes a striking change of form, and presents a lobu-lated appearance. As a consequence of the obliteration of a branch of the portal vein, the surrounding parenchyma becomes atrophied into these cellulo-fibrous masses, which subsequently shrivel by contracting, exert tension on the contiguous tissue, and, if they reach the surface of the liver, on its peritoneal coat; so that in this case they produce cicatrix-like depressions and furrows on the surface, which give to the still unaffected part of the liver a flattish, round, lobulated appearance. This form of inflammation seems, in most cases, to be secondary, and to be phlebitis induced by the coagulation of blood.

Inflammation of the trunk of the portal vein, and of its principal branches, with purulent infiltration, is undoubtedly of very much rarer occurrence. We have repeatedly observed it with incipient ichorous destruction, and necrosis of the coats of the vessel. It invariably gives rise to innumerable purulent and ichorous abscesses in the liver, dependent on capillary phlebitis; and also to such abscesses in the lungs, with a very highly developed pyaemia. Lambron has observed a case of pylephlebitis, which was produced by the penetration of a fish-bone through the pylorus and the pancreas into the trunk of the superior mesenteric vein. (Arch, gén., Juin, 1842).