PRODUCTION OF SUGAR IN THE LIVER. 313 



monizing, if possible, the facts brought forward by different 

 experimentalists. 



It is difficult to imagine how any observer, so well 

 known and accurate as Dr. Pavy, could assert positively, as 

 the result of personal examination, that the liver does not 

 contain sugar when examined immediately after its removal 

 from the living body, when Bernard and so many others 

 have demonstrated its presence in this organ in large quan- 

 tity. Yet such was the result of all the experiments of 

 Pavy, 1 and the same conclusion was arrived at by M'Don- 

 nell, a and afterward by Meissner and Jaeger, and by Schiff. 3 

 The elegant experiment of Bernard, showing that sugar is 

 formed in a liver removed from the body and washed 

 sugar-free by a stream of water passed through its vessels, 4 

 demonstrated the possibility of the production of sugar post- 

 mortem, so strongly claimed by Pavy as the only condition 

 under which it is ever formed ; still, it does not seem pos- 

 sible to deny the sugar-producing function of the liver, in 

 view of the conclusive experimental proof of the constant 

 presence of glucose in the blood of the hepatic veins. 



From our own experiments we have come to the conclu- 

 sion that Dr. Pavy and those who adopt his views cannot 

 consistently deny that sugar is constantly formed in the liver 



1 PAVY, Researches on Sugar Formation in ike Liver. Philosophical Trans- 

 actions, London, 1860, p. 595, and Researches on the Nature and Treatment of 

 Diabetes, London, 1862, p. 52, et seq. 



2 M'DONNELL, Observations on the Functions of the Liver, Dublin, 1865, p. 4, 

 et seq. 



3 SCHIFF, Nouvelles recherches sur la glycogenie animale. Journal de Vanatomie, 

 Paris, 1866, tome Hi., p. 354, et seq. Meissner and Jaeger and Schiff took por- 

 tions of the liver from living animals and from animals at the instant they were 

 killed by section of the medulla oblongata, plunged the tissue immediately into 

 boiling water, and invariably failed to find sugar in the extract. They did not, 

 however, recognize sugar in the blood coming from the liver, as we did in our 

 own experiments. 



4 BERNARD, Sur h mechanisme de la formation du sucre dans lefoie. Comptes 

 rendus, Paris, 1855, tome xli., p. 461, and Lemons sur les effets des substances 

 toxiqucs et medicamenteuses, Paris, 1857, p. 453. 



