GLYCOGEN CONTENT OF THE LIVER 265 



mann) ; and in the occasional cases of diabetes in which 

 previous examinations have found a cirrhosis of the liver 

 along with an apparently normal pancreas, it is very ques- 

 tionable whether there did not exist the above-mentioned 

 hydropic changes of the islands of Langerhans, described by 

 Weichselbaum, which are so difficult of recognition. 54 No 

 doubt nervous lesions of very many types may give rise 

 to glycosuria and be causative of true diabetes; and we 

 may accept as a fact that nervous irritations are capable of 

 inducing a liquidation of the glycogen stored in the liver, 

 as seen in case of the experimental sugar puncture. This 

 does not, however, at all affect our referring true human 

 diabetes to the pancreas. 



We are, therefore, fully justified from the present status 

 of our knowledge in regarding human diabetes as a special 

 type of pancreatic diabetes. 



The writer can scarcely be expected to enter into any 

 detailed description of this affection, the literature of which 

 is enough to fill a whole library; it will probably suffice if a 

 few points are brought out which, considered from the 

 standpoint of a biological chemist, seem for the time to be of 

 special interest, and to refer for the rest to Naunyn 's 

 classical work upon diabetes 55 and to the recent excellent 

 monographs by vonNoorden, 56 Magnus-Levy, 57 and Umber. 58 



Glycogen Content of the Liver. A point requiring at 

 least brief consideration is the amount of glycogen found in 

 the liver in human diabetes. As previously stated, Naunyn 

 assigned to "dyszooamylia" an important position; and 

 most writers are of the impression that, in severe diabetes 

 at least, the power of the liver to store glycogen has been 



84 Cf. F. Umber, Lehrb. der Ernahr. u. Stoffwechselkr., p. 161, 1909. 

 55 Naunyn, Diabetes Mellitus, 2d ed., Vienna, 1906. 



68 C. v. Noorden, Die Zuckerkrankheit, 5th ed., 1910; Handb. d. Pathol. d. 

 Stoffwechsels, 2, 1-113, 1907. 



"A. Magnus-Levy, Handb. d. Biochem., 4', 356, et seq., 1909. 

 88 F. Umber, 1. c., pp. 149-241. 



