90 FORMATION OF SUGAR IN THE LIVER. 
water, and I ascertained by boiling a portion of it with a 
little water, that its tissue was well washed, since it no 
longer contained any saccharine matter. Its decoction gave 
no sign of reducing the cuprotartrate of potassa, nor any 
trace of fermentation with beer yeast. There escaped from 
the cutting of the hepatic tissue, and from the opened vessels, 
a small quantity of a turbid liquid, which did not contain a 
trace of saccharine matter. I then left this liver in a vessel 
at the ordinary temperature, and on returning twenty-four 
hours after, I found that this organ, which I had left the day 
before completely deprived of sugar, now contained it in 
great abundance. It was sufficient, in order to convince 
myself of it, to examine a little of the liquid, which had 
flowed out around the liver, and which was strongly saccha- 
rine ; afterwards, by injecting by means of a small syringe 
with cold water by the vena porta, and collecting this water 
when it issued by the hepatic veins, I proved that this liquid 
gave rise with beer yeast, to a very abundant and very active 
fermentation. 
“ This very simple experiment, in which we see saccharine 
matter in abundance in a liver which had been completely 
freed from it as well as its blood, by means of washing, 
is one of the most instructive as regards the solution of the 
question of the glucogenic function of the liver with which 
we are occupied. This experiment proves clearly, as we 
have advanced, that in a fresh liver in the physiological 
state, that is to say, in function, there are two substances, 
namely:— 1. Sugar very soluble in w r ater, which is carried 
away with the blood by washing. 2. Another matter so 
sparingly soluble in water as to remain fixed in the hepatic 
tissue after the latter has been deprived of its sugar by wash- 
ing for forty minutes. It is this latter substance which, in 
the liver abandoned to itself, was gradually changed into 
sugar by a sort of fermentation, as we have just shown.” 
M. Bernard then goes on to state that this hepatic matter, 
capable of being changed into sugar, is almost insoluble in 
water, and likewise in alcohol, confirmative of which he 
adduces an experiment; also that ether does not alter it, or 
change its properties. He closes by observing: 
“The matter of which I have here only in some measure 
indicated the existence, must be isolated and studied further 
with care in a chemical and physiological point of view. I 
will only add, in this latter regard, that I have found that 
this matter exists in the liver only in the normal or functional 
state, and that it disappears completely from the tissue of 
this organ in all the circumstances in which the glucogenic 
