ADDITIONS AND NOTES TO VOL. II. 529 



the case in anaemic conditions, in which we frequently observe a 

 diminution of this constituent. While no increase of the fibrin 

 was observable in the acute form of B right's disease, chronic cases 

 of that disease presented an almost constant augmentation of 

 this constituent. 



In scurvy Becquerel and Rodier found a constant diminution 

 of the fibrin, but unfortunately these writers have designated as 

 scorbutic that condition in which, in consequence of other grave 

 diseases, the fibrin of the blood falls below 0*22- ; on the other 

 hand, in acute idiopathic scurvy, there was rather an augmentation 

 of the fibrin. As long as such a want of clearness appertains to 

 our ideas of certain diseases, and their various characteristics are 

 so unsystematically confounded, pathological chemistry can make 

 no positive advance, notwithstanding all the efforts devoted to the 

 study of this branch of science. It seems to us that Becquerel 

 and Rodier would have done far more to advance pathology if they 

 had investigated the excretions and some of the secretions con- 

 jointly with their analysis of the blood in any single patient, 

 instead of making numerous and laborious determinations of the 

 blood in similarly named but not analogous morbid conditions. 



(28) Addition to p. 253, line 8. This is the more striking as 

 von Becker* has found, from numerous and variously modified 

 experiments which he instituted in my laboratory, that, at all 

 events in rabbits, sugar cannot be detected in the urine, unless the 

 blood contains as much as Q'5% of that substance. Von Becker has 

 moreover very distinctly shown, by direct experiments, that highly 

 saccharine food exerts an influence on the amount of sugar in the 

 blood. Thus, for instance, he found that the blood of rabbits 

 which had been solely fed on carrots yielded 0*584-- of sugar, 

 whilst there was only 0'109 in the blood of those animals when 

 fed upon oats, and only 0'045^ in their blood when they had fasted 

 24 hours. As much as 1*198^ of sugar was found in the blood of 

 a rabbit which had been so abundantly supplied with sugar from 

 time to time during several hours, that some of this substance had 

 even passed into the solid excrements. 



It was the more important to show, by direct experiments, 

 that food exerted a decided influence on the amount of sugar in 

 the blood, since O. Funke, Bernard, and myself had failed in 

 detecting sugar in the portal blood. Notwithstanding its impro- 



* Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Zoologie. 1853. Bd. 5, S. 123. 

 * VOL. III. 2 M 



