T1IE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XXIX, 
No. 344. 
AUGUST, 1856. 
Fourth Series, 
No. 20. 
Communications and Cases. 
ON THE FORMATION OF SUGAR IN THE LIVER 
OF ANIMALS. 
By W. Camps, M.D. 
The last number of the British and Foreign Medico- Chirurgical 
Review contains the following remarks upon the production 
of sugar in the liver of the horse and dog, as the results of 
certain experiments in reference to this inquiry, made by 
C. G. Lehmann, in Germany, and by Claude Bernard, in 
France. Lehmann’s experiments were made partly on horses, 
killed five hours after the last meal ; partly on dogs, of which 
some had been killed in the fasting state, others five hours 
after a meal of raw meat, others after one consisting of boiled 
potatoes. The blood of the portal vein of the dogs killed in 
the state of fasting, and of those fed with raw meat, contained 
no sugar ; that of the horses, and of the remaining dogs, 
namely, those fed with potatoes, only a small quantity ; while 
the blood of the hepatic vein exhibited, in all cases, a very 
large amount. Lehmann attributes the origin of the sugar 
formed in the liver, in part at least, to the fibrin and albumen, 
the proportion of whichis diminished in the blood of the hepatic 
vein. His repeated experiments confirm the fact pointed out by 
Bernard, that the arterial blood is usually free from sugar ; 
that only when the venous blood in the right ventricle con- 
tained three per cent, of sugar or more, as in cases of diabetes 
mellitus, a part of the latter passes into the arterial blood. 
Claude Bernard took the liver of a dog fed exclusively on 
meat, immediately after death by section of the medulla oblon- 
gata ; he washed it out by a continued stream of water throuhg 
its vessels, so completely, that it was quite exsanguinous, 
xxix. 56 
