J. LeConte—Glycogenie Function of the Liver. 27 
burned as such, as soon as formed, but must be carried to the 
liver to be prepared for final combustion. These two facts 
must be brought together and reconciled. I think this may be 
done as follows: 
First, it must be remembered that waste is but a small fraction 
of the material used as fuel, by far the larger portion of such 
material being food which never becomes tissue at all, viz: 
amyloids and albuminoid excess. Now these also, although they, 
or the fuel made from them, are confessedly carried and burned 
in the blood, are burned principally in the capillaries and there- 
fore in contact with the tissues. The reasons then, for burning 
combustible food principally in the capillaries, would equally 
apply to burning combustible waste in the same place, and 
therefore the fact that combustible waste is burned principally 
in the capillaries is no argument that it is burned as soon as 
formed. Evidently then the question is not one which concerns 
the combustion of waste alone, but the combustion of all fuel. 
The question is, why does combustion of the combustible por- 
tion both of food and waste, take place, and therefore both ae 
and other forms of force are generated, in the capillaries and in 
contact with the tissues? e final cause is, indeed, plain 
enough; it takes place there, because there the force is wanted ; 
but what is the physical cause, or the process which determines 
this result? There are probably several. 
1. The blood is much longer time in the capillaries than in 
any other portion of its course, and therefore even if the rate of 
combustion be uniform, the amount of combustion would be 
greater there than in any other place; and moreover, if in- 
creased activity, increases heat and therefore combustion, it 
does so because it also increases the blood-supply. 
2. But probably the rate of combustion in the course of cir- 
culation is not uniform. It is probable that the tissues them- 
selves are an apparatus for causing or accelerating combustion. 
The termination of nerve-fibers in the tissues, and the control- 
ling influence of nerves over all functions, suggests that the 
discharge or the arrest of nerve-current, in some way which we 
do not yet understand, is the principal cause of combustion and 
therefore of generation of force there. Farther: it has been 
Suggested to me by Mr. Christy, an assistant in the chemical 
laboratory, that the chemical process may possibly be something 
like this: oxygen is carried by the hemoglobin, the fuel is 
carried as liver-sugar by the plasma, side by side in the same 
current; nerve discharge reverses the order of affinity and the 
In most tissues, such as many glands, etc., which are constantl 
active; and in all tissues so far as the function of nutrition is 
concerned, the process is continuous and under the influence of 
