 Now, there's two accessory organs that we're going to explore, and they are the liver, which is her, and the pancreas, which is right there. And we already talked about the fact that all of our digestive juices are dumped into the duodenum, and it's true. They both empty into the duodenum through a structure called the duodenal papilla. So, let's look really briefly at what do they do. The liver, the liver. I wish we could have a liver class. Like, that would be a phenomenal course to take, because the liver does like eight billion things, and the physiology of the liver is shocking. The anatomy of the liver is shocking. Every bit of blood from your digestive system travels to the liver. All the blood that's absorbing material, so you're absorbing stuff from your lumen of your digestive tube, into your blood, all of that blood goes to your liver before it goes anywhere else. And why would it do that? What's the functional significance of the fact that the plumbing is set up so that all that blood goes to the liver first? Well, the liver is involved in detox. So, it basically filters out your blood to make sure that you have not ingested any poisons. Thank you, liver, for doing that. The liver also produces bile, and bile as a substance, it produces bile. So, cells inside the liver actually build bile. Bile is an unbelievable substance that is also secreted into the duodenum. It's involved in emulsifying. If you do not have enough bile, then you will not be able to break your fats into smaller particles so that you can absorb fat into your bloodstream. And then you can imagine, if you can't absorb fat into your blood and it just stays in your intestines, what's it going eventually? Yeah, it's going out. And so you're going to end up with some very interesting, basically oily poop. Huh, that sounds attractive. Thank goodness for bile. When you hear the word bile, does it make you think of anything else? The liver produces bile, but you know what? The gallbladder stores bile. So, look, now this is a super bizarre way of drawing the gallbladder. The gallbladder is actually found on the inferior surface of the liver. I guess if we took this gallbladder and stuck it up there, then it would be in a more accurate anatomical location. But it's smashed up on the under surface of the liver, and the liver produces bile, and that bile goes into the gallbladder and just hangs out there until you eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's, at which time your gallbladder says whoa, dude, seriously, we better throw some bile in there so that you can digest all that fat. Thank you very much, Mr. Gallbladder. What else does the liver do that you need to know about? Let's look at the, no, let's do the pancreas first. So, our other accessory structure is the pancreas. The pancreas consists of both endocrine and exocrine cells, exocrine. The endocrine tissue in the pancreas, what does it do, my friends? It produces insulin, yep, which is involved in glucose, maintaining the proper concentrations of glucose in your blood. The exocrine portion of the pancreas produces digestive enzymes, produces bicarbonate, which helps increase the pH of the juice that's coming out of the stomach. So, bicarb and enzymes. And interestingly, now endocrine, as we know by definition, endocrine structures secrete hormones into the blood. Exocrine structures secrete substances outside the body. Remember, the duodenum, the lumen of the duodenum is actually outside your body. So, the exocrine portion of your pancreas is just secreting your enzymes and bicarb into the duodenum. I'm going to draw you a picture of the anatomy of that little setup. So, look and be amazed. First of all, here's your liver. Now, your liver has two ducts coming out of it. There is a right hepatic duct and a left hepatic duct. Seriously, this one must be the left hepatic duct. This one is the right hepatic duct. Now, they combine, they join into the common hepatic duct. True story, common hepatic duct. All right, now the common hepatic duct is joined by another duct that connects to who do you think this green blob is. This is the gallbladder. Indeed, it is so. And this duct right here coming out of the gallbladder is called the cystic duct. The cystic duct, interestingly, substances within the cystic duct can travel toward the gallbladder or away from the gallbladder. And they combine together to form the common bile duct. That's a lovely color. Common bile duct. Meanwhile, over here, I'm not using that color. We've got our friend, the who is this? That's our buddy, the pancreas. The pancreas is full of holy ductarama. And the pancreas actually has a duct that joins with the common bile duct. And where do they dump? Let's go with a lovely, we're not a color share, who is purple? This right here is like an opening that everybody's dumping in. Everybody's going in this opening. This is my duodenal papilla. That gives it away. And who is this? Where are we dumping? The duodenal papilla is found where? In the duodenum, right? It makes perfect sense. So bile is going to get dumped into the duodenum and pancreatic juices of lots of different flavors. Guess what this duct is called? I love it when it's easy. This is the pancreatic duct. Got it. What else do I have to tell you about this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know there's some gross anatomy, gross of the liver that we should probably address. Okay, so your liver has two lobes. And we know that when we look down at our body, left and right are switched, which means I can't draw on this up here because it's actually a webpage, but this is the left lobe of my liver, whereas this one is the right lobe of my liver. The right lobe is bigger. Now think, what structure is going to be superior to the liver? But the liver is actually nestled in the superior portion of your abdominal cavity. And it's separated from the thoracic cavity by the diaphragm. And we're going to talk about the diaphragm when we get to respiratory system, but the diaphragm is a skeletal muscle that basically covers the top of my liver. What is on this side? What is, if I keep going left, what am I going to find? You're going to get to your stomach. Your stomach is over here, and so the esophagus is actually going to pass through the diaphragm and into the stomach, which is next to the liver. Now there are a couple of structures that are significant from a gross anatomy perspective. One is this ligament right here called the falsiform ligament. The falsiform ligament actually connects, attaches to the anterior body wall. And at the inferior surface of the falsiform ligament, right down here, is a structure called the round ligament. The round ligament is like an old school umbilical vein. Do you need an umbilical vein anymore? Do you have an umbilical cord? No, but you used to. And you used to be attached to your mama through that umbilical cord. And the round ligament is the leftovers of that attachment. How cool is that? Check out the placement of the gallbladder. It's tucked up nice and tight to the liver itself. What else? Nothing else. That's perfect. Now let's talk about the final cavity. Let's go into a little more detail on the peritoneal cavity.