410 INTERNAL SECRETIONS OF PANCREAS AND SPLEEN. 



were, it would constitute an additional factor in this organ's 

 physiological functions. 



To which of the two pancreatic active structures can we 

 hypothetically ascribe the formation of the glycolytic enzyme? 

 Laguesse 26 has ascribed this function to the islands of Langer- 

 hans. That these structures underlie some physiological proc- 

 ess in addition to that already analyzed by us is undoubted. 

 The fact that they contain large nuclei shows that they are 

 physiologically active. "The cells composing the islands re- 

 semble those of the acini," says Opie; "they have a large, 

 round, occasionally oval, vesicular nucleus and a conspicuous 

 cell-body." They must produce some ferment or its zymogen, 

 for Ssobolew found that feeding animals on carbohydrates 

 caused them i.e., their protoplasm to become granular. 

 This is indirectly confirmed by the fact that these bodies are 

 often found diseased in diabetes. They had entirely disap- 

 peared in two of Ssobolew's cases. In a case of Opie's 27 hyaline 

 metamorphosis was strictly limited to the islands of Langer- 

 hans, the glandular acini remaining intact. Flexner 28 refers 

 to this cause of diabetes as follows: "That it depends upon an 

 internal secretion supplied by the pancreas to the blood is 

 highly probable. Whether this hypothetical secretion is the 

 product of the cells of the islands of Langerhans is unproven." 



The data bearing upon this source of diabetes are very 

 few, an unfortunate fact, since these particular structures 

 seem to us to play the predominating role in the production 

 of glycosurias of pancreatic origin, now that we have ascer- 

 tained that they are, through their ampullae, the only thor- 

 oughfares for the splenic ferment. Still, can we, with Laguesse, 

 now consider them as the source of a glycolytic ferment? Were 

 we to admit this possibility, we would find ourselves obliged 

 to concede that the pancreas supplies the intestinal tract with 

 a glycolytic ferment besides an amylolytic ferment, and we 

 would have, as a result, the formation of maltose from food- 

 starches and its immediate destruction by the glycolytic fer- 



M Laguesse: Loc. cit. 



27 Opie: Journal of Experimental Medicine, March 2o, 1901. 



88 Flexner: University of Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin, Jan., 1902. 



