294 
ORIGIN OF SUGAR IN THE LTVER. 
glucose in the mass of the blood during normal conditions. 
It was in consequence of experiments justly well remarked, 
in which we had seen animals submitted for entire months 
to an alimentation exclusively composed of meat, preserve in 
the liver appreciable quantities of sugar. We see at once 
that the results which we have just given deprive these 
experiments of a great portion of their signification ; but a 
few words will be necessary to show this truth in its full 
light. 
We have shown that the blood of man, and that of domes- 
tic animals, contain sugar, and that the liver, comparatively, 
contains scarcely two or three times as much sugar as the 
blood itself. In this difference, however, there is nothing 
astonishing. The hepatic organ is essentially an organ of 
depuration of the blood. The various products of digestion, 
brought by the vena porta from the whole surface of the 
intestinal tube, undergo, in this voluminous gland, a true 
depuration, which has the effect of rejecting the materials 
useless to nutrition, and of retaining the essential products 
of digestion. It is not, therefore, surprising that sugar 
figures in the liver in larger quantity than in the blood. All 
the glucose arising from digestion is concentrated in it, to be 
afterwards distributed by the super-hepatic veins into the 
general circulation. When it has arrived in the mass of the 
blood, it is gradually destroyed by the continued effect of the 
respiration, and, consequently, it diminishes in quantity 
every moment. 
From the facts which we have observed, it follows that 
M. Berpard’s experiments, who has found sugar remain in the 
liver of dogs subjected to an exclusively animal diet, can no 
longer be adduced in support of the glucogenic function of 
the liver. I have show r n that there exists nearly a half per 
cent, of glucose in the blood of the ox and the sheep collected 
at the time these animals are killed for public consumption. 
Now, the meat of these animals contains vessels, these vessels 
contain blood ; thus the flesh of beef and mutton, w hich had 
served for nourishing the dogs in M. Bernard’s experiments, 
contained sugar, and there w 7 as administered, without know- 
ing it, the very compound which had afterwards to be sought 
for. The quantity of glucose introduced by this way was, 
doubtless, small, but it w as constant ; and the liver being an 
organ of condensation and accumulation as regards glucose, 
it is not surprising that the proof of its existence in this 
organ was found after death. 
Our experiments enable us to explain very simply the 
peculiarities on which the study of what was called the glu- 
