i 4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



1853 he obtained his Doctorate at the London University; his 

 first paper, entitled, " Saccharine matter : its physiological rela- 

 tions in the animal mechanism," was published in the Guy's 

 Hospital Reports of the same year. It was the precursor of some 

 two-score of papers ; the last of these has but just appeared and 

 was published posthumously. Almost any one of the long 

 series might well have received the title of the first. Pavy's 

 scientific interests were indeed in one way extemely circum- 

 scribed : though other aspects of medicine and physiology 

 received attention from him intermittently, the subject which 

 really absorbed him was the metabolism of carbohydrates — 

 normal and erratic. Adolescent or aged, he remained devoted to 

 the problems of this domain. He was, of course, a specialist in 

 the treatment of diabetes and his professional fame ensured him, 

 during half a century, a lucrative consulting practice. But it must 

 not be supposed either that his interest in the metabolism of 

 carbohydrates arose merely from his professional needs or that 

 his labours as an investigator had anything whatever to do 

 with the desire to advertise his special knowledge : both began 

 before his practice took shape ; both lasted without abatement 

 long after his practice needed any prop whatever. 



He once told me himself that it was an instinctive interest 

 in this particular aspect of physiology that led him to specialise 

 professionally. He was a great believer (as who should not 

 be?) in the value of pathological studies to the physiologist 

 and was apt to think that if physiologists could see as much 

 as he himself had seen of human diabetes they would more 

 readily accept his teachings concerning the normal fate of sugar 

 in the body. 



It must be admitted that Pavy's special views did not, as a 

 matter of fact, conform to current opinion. In discussing them 

 I shall be bound, as a result of my own predilections, to take 

 more or less the standpoint of orthodoxy. But I write as one 

 personally indebted to the stimulus of Pavy's teachings and as 

 one who has seen physiology gain more from Pavy's work and 

 enthusiasm than from the writings of many who have kept step 

 with the majority. 



Claude Bernard's Glycogenic Hypothesis 



During the year in which he took his degree, Pavy paid 

 a visit to Paris; there he met Claude Bernard. Some few 



