316 SECRETION. 



formation into melassic acid on being boiled with an alkali. 

 One of its most marked peculiarities is that it ferments more 

 readily than any other variety of sugar ; and another pecu- 

 liarity, described first by Bernard, is that it is destroyed in 

 the economy with extraordinary facility. This fact has been 

 illustrated by the following ingenious experiment : Bernard 

 injected under the skin of a rabbit a little more than seven 

 grains of cane-sugar, dissolved in about an ounce of water, 

 and found sugar in the urine. Under the same conditions, 

 he found he could inject seven grains of milk-sugar, fourteen 

 and a half grains of glucose, twenty-one and a half grains 

 of diabetic sugar, and nearly thirty grains of liver-sugar, 

 without finding any sugar in the urine ; 1 showing that the 

 liver-sugar is consumed in the organism more rapidly and 

 completely than any other saccharine principle. 



Mechanism of the Production of Sugar in the Liver. 

 When Bernard first described the glycogenic function of the 

 liver, he thought that the sugar was produced from nitro- 

 genized principles, in some manner which he did not attempt 

 to explain. 8 Subsequent discoveries, however, have led to 

 conclusions entirely different. 



In 1855, Bernard first published an account of his re- 

 markable experiment showing the post-mortem production 

 of sugar. After washing out the liver with water passed 

 through the vessels, until it no longer contained a vestige of 

 sugar, it was allowed to remain at about the temperature of 

 the body for a few hours, and was then found to contain 

 sugar in abundance. 3 This experiment we have already re- 

 ferred to, and it is one that we have frequently verified. 

 Bernard explained the phenomenon by the supposition, sub- 



1 BERNARD, Lemons de physiologic experimentale, Paris, 1855, p. 214. 



2 BERNARD, Recherches sur une nouvelle fonction du foie, These, Paris, 1853, 

 p. 77. 



8 BERNARD, Sur h mecJianisme de la formation du sucre dans lefoie. Comptes 

 rendus, Paris, 1855, tome xli., p. 461. 



