a ae ar ry ee ee re ee ie aay Ape ee gee tans, Shr eons ee ata eae a NRE A Re eee ries oe BE ere tome es Re RES ORT Pe ee ee se ee ee ee eee eh Cee a ae eh Lae 
Ee Ne eee 5 is i EE Ne yor ee ae i 4 Be ne Gee er: PSs 
G. F. Barker—Physiological Chemistry. 55 
(68.) In his notices of the progress of physiology in 1862,* 
MEISSNER gives Pavy’s views at length,f and remarks that the 
are sustained by his own experiments. He had proved that 
blood removed from the right side of the heart of a healthy 
dog during life—the animal not being narcotized—contained 
only minute traces of sugar; no more indeed, than was 
found in the blood of the femoral artery drawn at the same 
time. He confirms the statement that plunging the liver into 
boiling water immediately after ee prevents the production 
of sugar ; a piece of liver, cut from a living rabbit and thus 
treated, yielding not a trace of sige while another piece of 
the same organ, taken a short time after death, was saccharine. 
He maintains too, the correctness of Pavy’s conclusions (1) that 
the blood of the "general circulation always contains traces of 
sugar ; and (2) that the liver is either entirely free from sugar 
during life or contains but a trace ; though after death, as well 
as during certain abnormal conditions in life, the amyloid sub- 
stance is converted into sugar with astonishing rapidity. 
In a second communication, made to the Royal Soci- 
ety, May 30, 1864, McDonneELL continues his observations on 
the amyloid substance of the animal economy. Pure amyloid 
matter, whether obtained from liver, or from foetal tissues, 
has the composition €,H, ,6, ording to his analyses. 
previous assertion that this {renee is dextro-rotatory like 
dextrin, he has been unable to verify, as even half a oe in an 
ounce of distilled water produces an opalescence,—due 
tial solution,—which prevents its use in the rath 
As to the amount of amyloid substance in the different tissues 
and in the same tissues at different periods of foetal life, the 
author thinks that the extreme delicacy of the acidulated tinc- 
ture of iodine test is such (one-tenth of a grain of amyloid 
matter in an ounce of water being readily detected) as to lead 
to error in its estimation. McDonnell maintains too, that the 
amyloid substance grows less and less in proportion as the tis- 
sues are developed, and that, contrary to the opinion of Ber- 
nard, it reg sere long before birth, © In cartilage it very early 
p n the cellules, but very soon afterward disappears. 
The epithelial cells of the skin, particularly where these cells 
aggregate together for the commencing development of a feath- 
er or a , Show a great abundance of the amyloid matter. 
So also the horny appendages of the skin, as the bill 
of the chick, the claws, hoofs, etc., all contain it in lates 
amount up to a certain stage of development. From 
grains of the horny tissue of the feet of a foetal calf of Pour 
* Bericht iiber die hg rig der Physiologie im Jahre 1862, 310. ane: 1864. 
+ Researches on the na and treatment of Diabetes, London, 1 
¢ Proc. Roy. Soc., xi 
