:3G 



GLYCOGEN 



excreted in the urine ; the other, that diabetes is 

 due to imperfect destruction of the sugar, either in 

 the intestine or in the blood. Some held that it 

 underwent conversion into lactic acid as it was 

 passing through the intestinal walls, while others 

 believed it to be destroyed in the blood by means 

 of the alkali therein contained." # 



Thus, before Claude Bernard (181 3-1878), the 

 pathology of diabetes was almost worthless. And, 

 in physiology, his work was hardly less important 

 than the work of Harvey. A full account of it, in 

 all its bearings, is given in Sir Michael Foster's 

 Life of Claude Bernard (Fisher Unwin, 1899). 



In Bernard's Legons sur le Diabete et la Glyco- 

 genese Animale (Paris, 1877), there is a sentence 

 that has been misquoted many times : — 



Sans dotUe, nos mains sont vides aujourd hui, 

 mais notre boucke petit etre pleine de legitimes pro- 

 messes pour lavenir. 



This sentence has been worked so hard that some 

 of the words have got rubbed off it : and the state- 

 ment generally made is of this kind : — 



Clatide Bernard himself confessed that his hands 

 ivere empty, but his mouth was full of promises. 



Of course, he did not mean that he was wrong in 

 his facts. But, in this particular lecture, he is 

 speaking of the want of more science in practice, 



* Reynolds 1 System of Medicine } vol. v., art. " Diabetes 

 Mellitus," 



