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filter was, of course, highly gelatinous, and gave an abundant precipi- 
tate when dropped into absolute alcohol. 
Fourth experiment:—Mutton, beef, veal, and rabbit flesh was 
treated thus: of each two ounces were pounded to pulp in a mortar, 
thoroughly mixed with one ounce of distilled water; the expressed fluid 
boiled, filtered, and placed in tubes over mercury, with yeast; equal 
portions of the same meats, when reduced to pulp, were mixed with 
saliva, and for some time kept at a temperature between 100° and 120°; 
subsequently, one ounce of distilled water was added toeach of the express- 
ed fluids, boiled, filtered, and placed in tubes with yeast, as the rest. In 
all a little more carbonic acid gas was formed than in the tube (always 
used as a corrector), containing an equal quantity of yeast, placed in 
distilled water. The meat, mixed with saliva, did not give more than 
that to which no saliva had been added, as it should have done did the 
meat contain amyloid substance convertible into sugar by contact with 
saliva. 
Is the liver endowed with the power of converting its amyloid sub- 
stance into sugar during life and health? This question is answered 
differently by some of the most eminent living physiologists. In taking 
one side, therefore, I do so with the greatest diffidence, feeling strongly 
the great delicacy of the question. It seems to me that there is, on the 
whole, evidence that the amyloid substance met with in the liver is, as 
it were, on its way upwards towards the more exalted or complex imme- 
diate animal principles, and that its conversion into sugar is not its 
normal destination; that the process of healthy assimilation tends, if 
the expression may be used, to promote it from the rank of ternary to 
that of quaternary compounds; and that its transition into sugar is, 
therefore, a deviation from this progressive course—a dissimilative in- 
stead of an assimilative process. 
No one now doubts that if an animal, which has been fed for some 
time exclusively on meat, is killed by pithing, that, although no sugar 
exists in the portal blood, it is found in the hepatic; but it is doubted 
by some whether this glucogenesis is a perfectly normal process going 
on during life. In making experiments on the tissue of the liver im- 
mediately after death, no matter what rapidity, precision, and care are 
exercised, it must be confessed that results are met with which seem 
contradictory. However, the object being to ascertain the condition of 
the hepatic blood during life, I have had recourse to catheterism of the 
right side of the heart—an operation which, in the hands of others, has 
given results corresponding with those to which I now allude. 
1st. In twelve experiments made on dogs, for some weeks before fed 
exclusively on meat, traces of sugar were found in the blood of the right 
side of the heart in five; there was no sugar discoverable in the blood 
of the remaining seven. 
2nd. In four rabbits fed on boiled eggs, meat, and butter, for some 
days, no sugar was detected in the blood drawn from the right side of 
the heart. 
3rd. In three dogs fed on mixed diet, and three rabbits fed on car- 
