The author of this excellent, well illustrated monograph considers cirrhosis to be the result of various types of hepatitis. The work is primarily anatomic, but the point of view is clinical. The latest histologic methods have been employed in a detailed study of cellular changes noted in the liver under various experimental conditions and also in numerous lesions found at operation or at autopsy in human beings.
Three great groups of diffuse hepatitis are recognized: the toxic-infectious type, the hepatitis of biliary stasis and the hepatitis of venous stasis. The first group, to which the author applies the term "cytolytic hepatitis," includes the familiar clinical syndromes of acute catarrhal jaundice, acute, subacute and chronic atrophy of the liver and atrophic cirrhosis, together with other less common forms, such as the cirrhosis of Hanot. The author distinguishes three stages, demonstrable experimentally and also seen in human material. The initial changes are