38 



GLYCOGEN 



science, to give them some immediate sign which 

 they could not refuse to see : — 



" At this present time, medicine is passing from 

 one period to another. The old traditions are los- 

 ing ground, and scientific medicine [la mddecine 

 expdrimentale) has got hold of all our younger 

 men : every day it gains ground, and will establish 

 itself against all its critics, and in spite of the 

 excesses of those who are over-zealous for its 

 honour. . . . And when men ask us what are the 

 results of scientific medicine, we are driven to 

 answer that it is scarcely born, that it is still in 

 the making. Those who care for nothing but an 

 immediate practical application must remember 

 Franklins words, What is the use of a new-born 

 child, but to become a man ? If you deliberately 

 reject scientific medicine, you fail to see the natural 

 development of man's mind in all the sciences. 

 Without doubt, our hands are empty to-day, but 

 our mouth may well be filled with legitimate 

 promises for the future." 



He died in 1878. The following account of the 

 discovery of glycogen is taken from his Nouvelle 

 Fonction du Foie (Paris, 1853) : — 



" My first researches into the assimilation and 

 destruction of sugar in the living organism were 

 made in 1843 : and in my inaugural thesis (Dec. 

 1843) I published my first experiments on the 

 subject. I succeeded in demonstrating a fact 

 hitherto unknown, that cane-sugar cannot be 

 directly destroyed in the blood. If you inject 

 even a very small quantity of cane-sugar, dis- 

 solved in water, into the blood or under the skin 



