CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 9 



blood, the body cannot deal with it, and excretes the 

 sugar unchanged. Such a condition constitutes the 

 disease termed diabetes, which appears to be a much Diabetes - 

 more complicated disease than its main symptom taken 

 alone would seem to indicate. The oxydation of sugar 

 only is diminished or not accomplished, that of the 

 albuminous substance and fats is rather increased, 

 sometimes enormously so ; therefore the carrying 

 power of the blood- corpuscles for oxygen cannot be 

 diminished as has been supposed lately, at least not in 

 all cases of diabetes. There must be a perversion of 

 chemical agency, as proved by the appearance of lactic 

 acid in the saliva and of acetone in the stomach and 

 the urine. On the whole there is at present neither a 

 plausible theory nor a rational treatment of diabetes, 

 as evidenced by the fact that noted physicians now 

 maintain that diabetic patients eating promiscuously 

 everything are better off than patients who abstain 

 from starch and confine themselves to the anamylic 

 diet so elaborately prescribed by Bouchardat. The 

 sugar may be made in the liver or in the muscles, 

 it may be the effect of a change of nervous influence 

 (as suggested by the artificial diabetes of animals after 

 wounds of the fourth ventricle of the brain), or of a 

 failure in the supply of a ferment capable of transferring 

 oxygen to it. The sugar when once in the diabetic 

 blood appears not to be increased or decreased by 

 standing of the drawn blood out of the body, the 

 blood consequently contains perhaps no glycogen. 

 This was ascertained by a special experiment, made 

 upon the blood of a diabetic patient. 



