358 THE ADRENAL, GENERAL MOTOR, AND VAGAL SYSTEMS. 



tion." Excessive stimulation by a great increase of oxidizing 

 substance in the blood evidently occurred. As soon as the 

 extract was injected it was carried to the lungs, and lost its 

 individuality immediately therein by taking up oxygen. It 

 could no longer, therefore, act as a diastase. 



The question now to decide is this: General stimulation 

 enhanced the production of an amylolytic ferment either by 

 the liver or by the pancreas. To which organ can we ascribe 

 this function? Since oxidation destroys sugar, a great excess 

 of oxidizing substance in the blood would burn sugar actively 

 on all sides and produce the opposite of glycosuria: i.e., ex- 

 cessive combustion and rapid disappearance of the liver glyc- 

 ogen through abnormal use of it in the other organs. But 

 here we have, as a result of a great increase of oxidizing sub- 

 stance in the blood, marked glycosuria, and that evidently 

 without preliminary feeding, since this fact is not mentioned 

 by Croftan. As the oxidizing substance does not affect glyc- 

 ogen, that of the liver could not be converted by it into sugar; 

 hence the excessive production of the latter can only be ac- 

 counted for by an equally excessive production of amylolytic 

 ferment. 



Claude Bernard showed that conversion of glycogen into 

 sugar took place more rapidly when the blood was made to 

 traverse the liver with unusual speed. Yet he attributed the 

 formation of the ferment to the liver, having obtained it from 

 pulp rubbed up and treated with glycerin, after the liver had 

 been washed out so as to remove the vascular contents. But it 

 seems clear that injections by the portal vein will hardly deplete 

 the liver of every particle of the ferment in its minute lobular 

 capillaries, while reduction of its substance to pulp and a three 

 days' immersion in glycerin will dissolve all that contained in 

 the latter. When we consider how readily conversion can be 

 produced, even by traces of soluble albumin, according to 

 Seegen, it is evident that upon the addition of water to the 

 glycerin solution the very small proportion that may have re- 

 mained imprisoned in some of the lobules will suffice for the 

 conversion of glycogen. 



One of Claude Bernard's experiments seems to us to afford 

 proof that the amylolytic ferment reaches the liver through 



