I will discuss this subject entirely from its practical standpoint, including only in the discussion the writer's personal experience in dealing with the conditions of the biliary passages, including the gall-bladder, cystic, hepatic and common duct, as they have arisen. The conditions for which the writer has operated have been gall-stones in the gall-bladder, gall-stone in the cystic duct, gall-stone in the hepatic duct, gall-stone in the common duct, strictures of the cystic duct, obstruction of the cystic duct due to kinking (angulation) of the duct caused by adhesions, acute phlegmonous cholecystitis, chronic empyema of the gall-bladder, hydrops of the gall-bladder and obstruction of the common duct with distension of the gall-bladder, due to pressure upon the terminal portion of the duct by malignant disease.
Any or all of these affections occasion pain which under one heading may be styled biliary colic.
That biliary colic can be occasioned by a