402 S. MORGULIS, PAUL E. HOWE AND P. B. HAWK. 



tissues so long as the reserves of the body have not yet been 

 entirely exhausted. The early appearance of fat globules in the 

 liver of fasting animals led Mottram to believe that this process 

 must be a physiological and not a pathological one. A similar 

 opinion was likewise expressed earlier by Gilbert et Jomier. 

 Mottram showed by means of histological examination of the 

 liver of rabbits and guinea-pigs as well as by actual chemical 

 investigation that with the advance of the fast an infiltration of 

 the liver cells with fat from the depots does take place. None 

 of the authors who gave attention to this matter studied the 

 liver of animals in very advanced stages of a fast. In our own 

 case the animals succumbed after a loss of about 50 per cent, of 

 their weight. There was very little histological evidence of a' 

 fat accumulation, but vacuolization of the cells was most promi- 

 nent. It is hardly conceivable that the vacuoles were produced 

 by the removal of the fat content by the reagents used in pres- 

 ervation in as much as it has been shown above that in one 

 instance a liver was observed the cells of which in certain localities 

 have undergone complete fatty degeneration. We are aware of 

 the fact, of course, that a parallelism does not exist between 

 histologically and chemically demonstrable fat in tissues. It 

 may be that the infiltration of the liver with fat, especially in 

 the early period of fasting, which is now proven beyond reason- 

 able doubt (Mottram, Smirnow) and is very properly considered 

 a physiological phenomenon, is concerned with the transfer of 

 depot fat to the rest of the tissues as food, while fatty degenera- 

 tion of the liver cells, such as we observed over certain areas, 

 is an independent phenomenon and is accompanied by the loss 

 of the normal functional power of the cells. The view expressed 

 here that the infiltration of the liver with fat may have to do 

 with the conveying of the fat as nutriment to the starving 

 tissues is borne out by Mottram's interesting observation on 

 the qualitative change of the liver fat on different days of a short 

 fast. There is a striking parallelism between the pure fatty 

 acids present in the liver and the fat-quotient, i. e., the ratio of 

 the total fat of the liver to the initial body weight, showing that 

 whenever an increase in fat content, i. e., an infiltration, occurs 

 it is due to an accumulation of fatty acids. If this view of the 



