CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 53 



albumen, mucine, and glykogen. Sugar and biliary 

 acids are also always obtained from the extract of the 

 liver, although the ducts may have been carefully 

 washed out ; and as cholophaeine is contained in the 

 cells, we may assume that the bile acids are also con- 

 tained and made in the cells. The fresh liver is always 

 alkaline, but on standing it becomes acid. The gly- 

 kogen is mostly or entirely transformed into sugar. 

 The liver-extract made by boiling water mostly con- 

 tains lactic acid and volatile fatty acids, inosite, 

 hypoxanthine, xanthine, and uric acid, and leucine. 

 The latter body occurs in livers which are quite fresh, 

 in very small quantity, but increases by decomposition, 

 for which the tissue of the liver or its cells possess 

 particular aptitude. Fat is extracted from most livers, 

 in large quantities from diseased livers. Tyrosine 

 occurs in diseased livers only, and is not easily obtained 

 even from thoroughly putrid livers. In the ash of the 

 liver phosphoric acid and potassium predominate, which 

 is the more to be noted as the bile acids in man are 

 mainly combined with sodium. From fresh livers of 

 young persons and animals hydrogen is sometimes 

 evolved on immersion in warm water. The degene- Bacony liver 

 ration of the liver, which is sometimes wrongly called 

 amyloid, or otherwise the " Speckleber " of the Ger- 

 mans, and'" waxy degeneration " of the English, has 

 not any resemblance to the amyloid degeneration of 

 the spinal marrow : for iodine and sulphuric acid, or 

 iodine alone, produce in it only a red or reddish-brown 

 .mahogany-like coloration, its material being evidently 

 }f an albuminous kind : and on extraction by alcohol 



