Still the fact remains that the urine of many cases of liver disease has been found to be more toxic than the urine of other persons. When the liver is damaged it cannot destroy poisons in the normal manner, as was shown by experiments. Thus, the liver cells have been experimentally injured when it was found that such a liver was not able to destroy strychnine as well as a normal liver. Very important findings have been made by Roger and Gamier.[185] They have ascertained that privation, bad nutrition, etc., can also lower the vitality of the liver and diminish its antitoxic properties. Footnote 185: Roger et Garnier: C. R. Soc. de biol., p. 209, 1899. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV. THE HYGIENE OF THE LIVER. WE have often observed that people suffering from diseases of the liver feel and look much better after abstaining from meat and living on milk and a vegetarian diet. If such a diet be beneficial in cases where the tissues of the liver are degenerated, it appears reasonable to assume that it will be equally efficacious when the liver has not yet been altered by disease. We must realize that the various unwholesome matters we eat or drink are carried to the liver to be dealt with, and that the end-products of the decomposition of the meat, and other elements contained in preserved meat which may not be perfectly sound, may injure the liver-tissue, or, at any rate, throw more work on this organ than food in the nature of vegetables or milk. A milk diet has the further great advantages that it assists in destroying toxic products in the intestine, and also that it can hinder the development of gall-stone disease (see Chapter XXXIX). Not only meat used in abundance, but also various kinds of spices, condiments and stimulants may be very injurious, especially alcohol, if taken in large quantity. Gin and brandy are the most deleterious in their action. Wines containing little alcohol are less harmful, but acid or strong white wines may injure the liver-tissue. The well-being of this organ is essentially dependent on the good condition of various other organs with which it stands in very close relation, in particular the intestines, for instance. It is from here that most of the toxic products enter the liver, either by the portal vein or through the choledochus. The intestine always contains myriads of microbes, which may enter the liver either by the blood or the bile, and thus provoke very important changes in the liver-tissue. Professor Adami,[186] of Montreal, found colon bacilli in a cirrhotic liver. Footnote 186: Quoted from Quincke: “Diseases of the Liver” in Nothnagel’s “Practice.”