The common association of inflammatory enlargement of the head of the pancreas and disease of the bile tracts appears to indicate a relationship between the two conditions. It has generally been assumed that bile tract disease is primary and that the pancreatic affection is in some way a result or complication of the primary biliary infection. The question, therefore, in the minds of most investigators of this subject has been as to the modus operandi of this relationship.
Deaver, of late years, has been the champion, in America, of the theory of the lymphatic transmission of infection from the gallbladder to the pancreas. His conception is based largely on clinical experience and may be stated as follows:
The gallbladder, bile ducts, pyloric region of the stomach and the second part of the duodenum, through their efferent lymph channels, are placed in intimate relation to the head of the pancreas, and