294 PENTOSURIA 



author has often wondered what factors make particularly 

 for the interest of the great medical public in a discovery in 

 the field of his particular specialty. That such interest 

 should be prominently shown for those points which may be 

 expected to be of direct use in the practice of medicine is 

 quite conceivable. But it is not so easy to understand why 

 the greatest interest is so often not manifested for new facts 

 that are clear and unambiguous and represent real advances, 

 but by preference is turned to indefinite, vague and uncertain 

 features in which there is no trace of really precise adapta- 

 tion of chemical and physiological concepts. It is probably 

 not wrong to believe that it is due to the fact that there are 

 many people who at heart are glad to avoid the rather great 

 inconveniences which a regulated course of chemical study 

 brings with it, but who in their own interest and that of pos- 

 terity are unwilling to forego having a new starlet blaze in 

 the firmament of biochemical research. According to their 

 experience these same people have an invincible and instinc- 

 tive preference for those fields of investigation in which 

 discovery is decidedly more easy than control of the dis- 

 coveries made by others. 



But to return to Cammidge 's reaction, opinions generally 

 contradict its practical utility as an aid in functional diag- 

 nosis of pancreatic affections. As to its real value it would 

 seem from a few studies of critical character 64 to be fully 

 shown to be neither distinctive nor especially reliable. It 

 clearly does not deal with any one single substance; the 

 presence of any poly- or disaccharide in the urine may by 

 cleavage give rise to an osazone-forming atomic group. 

 Even the small amounts of polymeric carbohydrates which 

 exist normally in the urine, particularly after a diet rich in 



"O. Schumm and Hegler, Munchener med. Wochenschr., 56, 1878, 1909, 

 Mitt. a. d. Hamburgischen Staatskrankenanstalten, 11, 1910, cited in Centralbl. 

 f. d. ges. Biol., 10, No. 1933; L. Grimbert and R. Bernier, Jour, de Pharm. et de 

 Chem., 30, 529, 1909, cited in Biochem. Centralbl., 9, No. 1643; J. E. Schmidt 

 (Enderlen Clinic, WUrzburg), Mitt. a. d. Grenzgebiete d. Med. u. Chir., 20, 426, 

 1909. 



