90 BILE. 



named distinguished experimentalists do not admit of the inter- 

 pretation we have endeavoured to give to them, the circumstance 

 that the quantity of fat entering the liver is greater than that which 

 passes from it, must remain entirely unexplained. 



Sugar, or, at all events, a carbo-hydrate, must be regarded as 

 another element essential to the formation of bile. The chemical 

 equation according to which cholic acid may be regarded as com- 

 posed of oleic acid and sugar, would not possess a higher value 

 than any other one that might very readily be established from 

 the high atomic weight of cholic acid, were it not supported by 

 other grounds. We mentioned in the first volume (see p. 290), 

 that Bernard and Barreswil had found sugar in the tissue of the 

 liver ; and this discovery, which I have verified by my own ob- 

 servations, has been recently corroborated by the numerous 

 experiments of Frerichs* on the livers of animals and men. This 

 observer convinced himself that the quantity of sugar in the liver 

 was wholly independent of the nature of the food so far, at least, 

 that it was discovered in the liver of animals which had been fed 

 for a long time on flesh alone. We considered, at p. 292 of the 

 first volume, the grounds which render it probable that sugar may 

 be formed in the animal organism from the protein-bodies. 

 Schererf* has recently drawn attention to a peculiar kind of sugar, 

 incapable of fermentation, and found in the muscular juice ; and 

 C. Schmidt J believes that a small quantity of sugar exists in all 

 normal blood. More or less sugar is always conveyed by the 

 portal vein to the liver during the digestion of vegetable food ; for 

 we know, on the one hand, that the sugar which is gradually 

 produced from starch through the whole course of the intestinal 

 canal, is principally absorbed by the veins ; and, on the other 

 hand, that the veins of the stomach, and of the small as w r ell as 

 the large intestines, are emptied into the portal vein; and we 

 consequently find, on a careful examination of the blood of the 

 portal vein of the larger herbivorous animals, that it generally 

 contains some portion of sugar, whilst this substance, as far as my 

 experience goes, is much less constantly to be detected in the 

 chyle, We are, therefore, disposed to agree with Frerichs in 

 assuming that the sugar found in the parenchyma of the liver 

 contributes, together with other constituents of the portal blood, 

 at least in part, towards the formation of bile, although a large 



* Op. cit. p. 831. 



t Verhandl. der physik. med. Gesellschaft in Wurzburg. 1850. S. 51-55. 



I Charakteristik der epid. Cholera. S. 162. 



