338 SUGAR DESTRUCTION IN THE ECONOMY 



scarcely any loss of sugar could be determined. 21 In the 

 last count there will be nothing left to do but to accept the 

 same verdict in the sugar problem as we long ago arrived 

 at in the case of the protein question ; that the secret of the 

 process is hidden within the living cells and cannot be ex- 

 tracted by any solvent. The hope of preparing some fer- 

 ment solution and by some clever manipulation bring about 

 the combustion of protein at 40 C. into carbonic acid, 

 ammonia and water has long since been abandoned. The 

 same thing will have to be accepted in the case of the sugar 

 problem. It is the same in science as in life ; when we stop 

 striving for the unttainable our efforts to reach the attain- 

 able are pressed forward with just so much the fresher 

 courage. 



Glycolysis in Blood. Interesting results in relation to 

 glycolysis may be expected from the study of sugar catabol- 

 ism in blood. This is the more noteworthy because for a long 

 time there was nothing at all promising in view from this 

 point of investigation. 



Claude Bernard observed long ago that the sugar content 

 diminished in blood on standing for a time, and expressed 

 the idea that this was perhaps due to a destruction of sugar 

 with formation of lactic acid. Later blood glycolysis was 

 made the subject of careful investigation, especially by 

 Lepine, who framed a new, much discussed and soon aban- 

 doned theory of diabetes upon the fact that he found the 

 phenomenon decreased in diabetics and in animals deprived 

 of the pancreas. Lepine, and with him Arthus, referred the 

 glycolytic process in the blood to the leucocytes ; the latter 

 was disposed to recognize it as a postmortem phenomenon 

 related with the disintegration of the blood corpuscles. 22 



M McGuigan (Washington Univ., St. Louis, Mo.), Amer. Jour, of Physiol., 

 21, 334, 1908; H. McGuigan and C. L. von Hess (Northwestern Univ. Med. 

 School), ibid., 80, 341, 1912. 



"Cf. the Older Literature upon Blood-glycolysis : C. Oppenheimer, Die 

 Fermente, 3d ed., 478, 1910. 



