DR. PAVY AND DIABETES 21 



regard to the immediate fate of carbohydrate in the body. 

 His teaching became even more dogmatic than before on the 

 point that the body must protect itself from the circulation 

 of free sugar ; he displayed, moreover, as was only logical 

 on his part, a strong antagonism to the current idea that protein 

 enters the blood broken down into its constituent amino-acids. 

 It seemed to him obvious that anything added to the blood 

 in such a way as to disturb its mean composition must circulate 

 in large molecular complexes, insusceptible of leaking through 

 the kidneys. He held, therefore, that the foodstuffs were 

 "assimilated" at the very earliest stage of their entry into 

 the body. 



Two cellular mechanisms guard the portals of entry : fixed 

 epithelium cells, which line the intestinal wall ; free floating 

 cells (lymphocytes), which normally crowd the lymph spaces 

 of the intestinal villi but are susceptible of being transported 

 through lymphatic channels into the blood. Orthodox physio- 

 logy attaches many functions to the epithelium cells and among 

 them some of a synthetic nature. Pavy added another function. 

 He believed them to be capable of converting sugar directly 

 into fat and looked upon them as constituting the first line of 

 defence possessed by the body against the entry of diffusible 

 sugar. He held that he had actually seen this immediate 

 conversion of carbohydrate into fat in the intestinal wall of 

 the rabbit, though his observation, it must be confessed, is 

 not easy to repeat. Later on he attached much more weight 

 to the functions of the lymphocytes ; reading his later writings 

 in the order of their appearance, one realises that his faith in 

 the assimilative importance of these cells became more and 

 more vivid. In his last years, indeed, he found it difficult to 

 understand how any one could disagree with him on this point. 

 His faith certainly went far. Others have looked upon the 

 lymphocytes as important agents in the transport of protein 

 from the gut but Pavy took a bolder view : he conceived that 

 all the protein and carbohydrate eaten, all the supply meant for 

 the tissues as a whole, is first assimilated by the lymphocytes ; 

 only when there is marked excess of food to be dealt with 

 is the function of the liver as a second line of defence neces- 

 sarily called upon. This assimilation by the lymphocytes is 

 of the completest kind, leading to an actual growth of the cells, 

 proportionate to the amount of food absorbed ; even as yeast- 



