338 THE METABOLISM OF THE CARBOHYDRATES 



workers (and they include the majority), ascribe the hydrolysis 

 of glycogen to a ferment produced by the hepatic cells. In 

 support of this latter view stand the following observations : 

 ferments can act in weak chloroform water or in a 0*2 per cent, 

 solution of sodium fluoride, whereas in these antiseptics all vital 

 action is stopped ; now pieces of liver when minced and placed 

 in either of these solutions go on actively transforming glycogen 

 into sugar. A piece of liver, washed free of all traces of sugar 

 and blood serum through its blood-vessels, hardened in alcohol, 

 and then triturated with glycerine in a mortar yields an extract 

 with marked glycogenetic powers. 



There can be no reasonable doubt that the process depends 

 on a ferment. Even if we do state that it is due to the so-called 

 vital activity of the hepatic cells, we can mean nothing more 

 than that it is a ferment process occurring in the living proto- 

 plasm of the hepatic cells, instead of at the glycogen depots 

 themselves : that a zymase, or intracellular ferment, acts and 

 not a extracellular ferment. 1 



A similar .ferment, i.e. one producing dextrose from glycogen, 

 is contained in the blood. This may possibly owe its origin to 

 the hepatic cells, having escaped from these into the blood. 



The presence of this ferment actually present in the liver cells 

 is a strong argument in favour of Bernard's theory. 



Accepting Bernard's explanation regarding the fate of 

 glycogen in the organism as the more probable one, we must 

 next consider where, and by what agency, the dextrose, thrown 

 into the blood by the hydrolysis of glycogen, is used up. We 

 must, in other words, investigate the cause of glycolysis. 



It cannot be in the blood itself that this process takes 



i This is Dastre's conception of the process ( 6 ). He considers that there 

 exists in the liver cells an endoenzyme capable of converting glycogen into 

 maltose, just as there exists in yeast an endoenzyme which inverts cane-sugar. 

 This endoenzyme, during life, is firmly held in the hepatic cells, but can be 

 separated from them by various methods, e.g. by acting on them with chloroform 

 water or 0'2 per cent, of sodium fluoride in physiological saline. F. Pick ( 14 ) 

 (Hofmeister's Beitr., iii. 163, 1902) confirms this view of Dastre, and shows 

 further that by boiling an extract of liver, made by extracting an alcoholic 

 precipitate of liver with 0-8 per cent. Nad solution containing 0*2 per cent, 

 sodium fluoride, the diastatic action is lost, and, further, that the diastatic 

 action of such an extract is stronger than that of blood, showing that the 

 ferment is not derived from this source, but is a product of the hepatic cells. 

 This important observation is in direct antagonism to Pavy's view. 



