104 J. LeConte—Glycogenre function of the Liver. 
2. In the well-known and usually fatal disease, diabetes, 
sugar is excreted in large quantities by the kidneys. But the 
kidneys are not the organ in fault. On the contrary they do 
all they can to remedy the evil. Sugar in the blood is ex- 
tremely hurtful; the kidneys remove it as fast as they can. 
Some have supposed that the lungs are in fault. e sugar 
contributed by the liver to the blood, they say, is not burned 
up as fast as received (as it ought to be) on account of deti- 
ciency of oxygen taken in by the lun ut the true organ 
directly in fault is undoubtedly the liver. In diabetic patients 
the liver seems to have Jost its glycogen-making power. The 
sugar taken up by the portal capillaries is not arrested in the 
liver, but allowed to pass straight through unchanged into the 
general circulation, whence it must, of course, be eliminated 
by the kidneys. The difficulty is not too much sugar-making 
but failure to arrest the sugar as glycogen. This is proved b 
cases of traumatic diabetes. It is well known that puncture 
of the floor of the fourth ventricle of the brain produces dia- 
betes. In such cases, even though sugar be ingested in large 
quantities there is no glycogen formed in the liver; the glu- 
cose having been allowed (probably on account of paralysis of 
the vaso-motor nerves) to pass straight through unchanged 
into the general circulation. The extreme gravity of patho- 
logical diabetes, therefore, is partly the result of the directly 
hurtful effects of sugar in the blood, as shown by diabetic cat- 
aract, but chiefly owing to serious disorder of a very impor- 
tant function of the liver—a function on which wholly depends 
animal heat and animal force of all kinds, viz: the prepara- 
tion of food and waste-tissue for easy combustion. The use of 
reconverted into the soluble form of sugar. 
In a work entitled “‘ Digestion Végétale,” published in 1876, 
