In anatomy, the round ligament of (the) liver (also commonly known by its Latin name, ligamentum teres - or more specifically ligamentum teres hepatis as the human body has seven round ligaments in total, two attached at each elbow, two attached at each femur, two on the uterus, and one on the liver) is a degenerative string of tissue that exists in the free edge of the falciform ligament of the liver. Anatomically, the round ligament divides the left part of the liver into medial and lateral sections.
The round ligament represents the remnant of the fetal umbilical vein. The round ligament therefore only exists in mammals. Prenatally and for a month or two after birth, the umbilical vein is patent, subsequently degenerating to fibrous tissue, the round ligament.
The umbilical vein/round ligament inserts around the umbilicus and is an important landmark of the inner surface of the anterior abdominal wall.
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“A life-worshipper’s philosophy is comprehensive.... He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought of death ... and now a Dionysian child of nature; now a pessimist and now, with a change of lover or liver or even the weather, an exuberant believer that God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)