398 THE LIVER. 



the organs, but perhaps more likely, if the leucocytes do not act as car- 

 riers, it is formed on the spot from the sugar. 1 The glycogen formation 

 seems to be a general function of the cells. In adults, the liver, which 

 is very rich in cells, has the property, on account of its anatomical posi- 

 tion, of transforming large quantities of sugar into glycogen. 



This glycogen, which is deposited in the liver as reserve-food, in order 

 that it can be useful to the body, must at least in greater part be trans- 

 formed into sugar and supplied to the various organs by the blood. The 

 question now arises whether there is any foundation for the statement 

 that the liver glycogen is transformed into sugar. 



As first shown by BERNARD and redemonstrated by many inves- 

 tigators, the glycogen in a dead liver is gradually changed into sugar, 

 and this sugar formation is caused, as BERNARD supposed and then shown 

 by numerous investigators by a diastatic enzyme whose relation to the 

 diastatic enzyme of the blood is not quite clear. 2 



This post-mortem sugar formation led BERNARD to the assump- 

 tion of the formation of sugar from glycogen in the liver during life. 

 BERNARD suggested the following arguments for this theory: The liver 

 always contains some sugar under physiological conditions, and the 

 blood from the hepatic vein is always somewhat richer in sugar than the 

 blood from the portal vein. BERNARD'S views found in SEEGEN an active 

 supporter, as he tried to show by numerous experiments the physio- 

 logical sugar content of the liver as well as the high sugar content of the 

 blood of the liver veins. On the other hand the correctness of the 

 observations of BERNARD and SEEGEN is disputed by many investigators 

 such as PAVY, RITTER, SCHIFF, EULENBERG, LUSSANA, MOSSE, N. ZUNTZ 

 and others, 3 and in regard to the sugar content in the two kinds of 

 blood we have come to the general conclusion that when only the stasis 

 and other disturbing influences of the operation are prevented, the blood 

 of the liver veins, if at all, is only slightly richer in sugar than the blood 

 of the portal vein. 4 



The circumstance that the blood-sugar rapidly sinks to J-J of its 

 original quantity, or even disappears when the liver is cut out of the 

 circulation, indicates a vital formation of sugar in the liver (SEEGEN, 

 BOCK and HOFFMANN, KAUFMANN, PAVY and others). In geese whose 



1 ^ee Dastre, Compt. rend, de soc. biol., 47, 280, and Kaufmann, ibid., 316. 

 'Rohmann, Verb. d. Ges. deutsch. Naturf. u. Aerzte. Breslau, 1903; Borchardt, 

 Pfliiger's Arch., 100; Zegla, Bioch. Zeitschr., 16; E. Starkenstein, ibid., 24. 



3 In regard to the literature on sugar formation in the liver see Bernard, Legons sur 

 le diabete, Paris, 1877; Seegen, Die Zuckerbildung im Tierkorper, 2. Aufl. Berlin, 

 1900; M. Bial, Pfliiger's Arch., 55, 434. 



4 Seegen, Die Zuckerbildung, etc., and Centralbl. f. Physiol., 10, 497 and 822; 

 Zuntz, ibid., 561; Mosse, Pfliiger's Arch., 63; Bing, Skand. Arch. f. Physiol., 9. 



