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into alcohol and carbonic acid, and under others into lactic acid. 

 Now, may not hepatine occupy a parallel position, and be susceptible 

 of undergoing a process of metamorphosis besides that into sugar, 

 the product having as yet escaped discovery ? Hepatine itself is a 

 body that has been known to us but a very short period. 



I have mentioned that the carbonate of soda does riot enjoy any 

 direct chemical power of effecting a destruction of hepatine up to 

 the temperature of ebullition ; neither, as far as I have yet learnt, 

 can it occasion a disappearance of it from the liver after death : it, 

 however, holds the saccharine metamorphosis in check. Previous to 

 this inquiry, although I had known that a tolerably strong solution of 

 the caustic alkali prevented the production of sugar in the liver after 

 death, I was not aware that a moderate amount of the carbonated 

 alkali has so completely the same effect. In an experiment recently 

 performed, I injected, instantly after the animal was pithed, 200 

 grains of the carbonate of soda dissolved in an ounce of water, into 

 the liver through the portal vein : a couple of lobes happened to 

 escape being properly penetrated by the injection, and in this part of 

 the liver the ordinary post-mortem production of sugar took place. 

 In the other portion of the organ no saccharine metamorphosis 

 occurred ; nor could I discover that the injection had in any degree 

 caused a disappearance of the hepatine, as happens under its opera- 

 tion during life. The liver examined shortly after the introduction 

 of the carbonate of soda had been completed, was found to be highly 

 charged with hepatine and quite devoid of sugar ; examined again 

 on the following day, the result was identically the same. 



Amongst my examinations of the livers of the lower animals, I 

 once met with a specimen from a cod-fish in which the hepatine 

 resisted the ordinary post-mortem transformation into sugar. He- 

 patine was present in the greatest abundance, but there was only the 

 merest trace of sugar discoverable when first examined, and likewise 

 after it had been standing aside for twenty-four hours. It was then 

 exposed to a moderately elevated temperature for three hours, and 

 still indicated only a trace of the presence of sugar, notwithstanding 

 that the decoction immediately produced sugar copiously on being 

 treated with saliva. The result being so much at variance with that 

 usually met with, made a strong impression upon me. I can only 

 see two ways of accounting for it ; either the hepatine was protected 



