PAVY'S THEORY 377 



Diet Lipcemia. In detailing the different forms of 

 lipasmia mention must finally be made of mastlipsemia, seen, 

 for instance, in geese sometimes after forced carbohydrate 

 feeding and after fatty diet. 78 It may, perhaps, be imagined 

 that when there is too great a transformation of carbohy- 

 drates into fat, the fat depots become overfilled to such an 

 extent that finally they can no longer accommodate it, and 

 that then it accumulates in the blood. It may be, too, that 

 the lipaemia of many obese alcoholics can be referred to a 

 similar mode of causation (v. infra, p. 387). 



Pavy's Theory. Pavy 79 observed that if rabbits are fed 

 upon material rich in carbohydrates but poor in fat, as 

 oats, the intestinal chyle vessels afterwards become promi- 

 nent from their milk-white injection. On this fact he based 

 his theory (diametrically opposed to all of our views) that 

 the intestinal villi are able to change carbohydrate into fat, 

 and that this happens with the most of the resorbed carbo- 

 hydrates so that they do not enter the blood as sugar. 

 Gr. von Bergmann and K. Eeicher were, however, able to- 

 prove that, on feeding with oats from which the fat had been 

 carefully extracted, no fat appears either in the intestinal 

 villi or in the lymph vessels, and that therefore Pavy's 

 hypothesis is not correct. 80 



The path to knowledge is paved with mistakes ; this has 

 always been so and always will be. Whoever has devoted 

 himself for any time to experimental study learns from his 

 own failures to be lenient toward the failures of others. 

 And yet one cannot help feeling depressed to see, as in this 

 instance, some new theory brought before the world which 

 upsets all existing opinions and brings about a lot of con- 

 fusion, when even a simple and obvious control examination 

 would have been sufficient to prevent its birth. 



78 Bleibtreu, Pfliiger's Arch., 85, 345, 1901. 



79 F. W. Pavy, Ueber den Kohlehydratstoffwechsel, Leipzig, Engelmann, 

 1907. 



80 G. v. Bergmann and K. Reicher (F. Kraus's Clinic, Berlin), Zeitschr.. 

 f. exper. Pathol., 5, 760, 1909. 



