2 6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



or a muscle-fibre stores it. But by the time Carbohydrate 

 Metabolism and Diabetes was written (1906) he had come 

 nearer to Claude Bernard. " The seat of actual consumption 

 is in the muscles and therefore, in the case of its disappearance 

 {i.e. the disappearance of glycogen) from the liver, there must 

 be transport in some way or other through the circulating 

 system," though the transport is not in the form of free sugar. 

 A change from time to time in the language he uses when 

 discussing the action of the liver-cell illustrates the gradual 

 modification of his views. At one time we find only such 

 statements as that the bioplasmic complex of the cell " takes 

 on" sugar and "gives out" glycogen or fat. It might again 

 " take on " glycogen and " give out " fat ; only in the case of the 

 liver bioplasm there is no " giving out " of sugar. At this time, 

 in common with all or most writers, he made a sharp dis- 

 tinction between the powers of enzymes which could only 

 bring about degradations and those of the protoplasm itself, 

 which could induce synthetic and constructive changes. He 

 was clear at that time that the production of sugar observed 

 in the excised liver was due to the influence of an enzyme 

 exercising an activity which was essentially a post-mortem 

 phenomenon of no importance physiologically. In 1897-8 he 

 was engaged in a controversy on this point, in which he 

 showed, as always, great dialectical skill, from which, it must 

 be confessed, he emerged victorious as an experimentalist. 

 But neither he nor many others then realised what Goethe 

 appears to have realised when he wrote in Wilhelm Meister's 

 Lehrjahren, " Nach dem Tode arbeiten sich die Krafte, die 

 vergebens nach ihren alten Bestimmungen zu wirken suchen, 

 ab an der zerstOrung der Teile die sie sonst belebten." J 



Pavy was after all as ready as most to realise later on, when 

 experimental work had clarified our views, that the enzymes 

 which, after disorganisation of the tissues containing them, pro- 

 duce results that are, quantitatively at any rate, unphysiological, 

 may be agents which " animate " the tissues when their work is 

 duly organised and orientated in intact cells. We find him {Car- 

 bohydrate Metabolism and Diabetes, p. 68) fully admitting subse- 

 quently that the process which precedes transport of carbohydrate 

 from liver to tissues is saccharification of the glycogen by the 

 diastatic enzyme ; only, once more, the sugar must not be 

 1 Quoted by M. Jacoby, Ergebenisse der Physiologie, I. i. p. 239. 



