FORMATION OF SUGAR IN THE LIVER. 
91 
function is arrested, which circumstances I have long since 
established. This matter belongs exclusively to the tissue 
of the liver in which it takes rise, for I have very often 
proved that there are no traces of it in the blood of the vena 
porta , nor in the blood of other parts of the body. 
“ Finally, I may remark that during life this matter, being 
incessantly renewed in the hepatic tissue under the influence 
of nutrition, is continually converted in it into saccharine 
matter, which replaces in the liver the sugar which the 
current of blood perpetually carries away by the hepatic 
veins. After death, in a liver extracted from the body, this 
matter, under the influence of moisture, may continue to be 
converted into sugar until it is exhausted. But as then no 
more sugar leaves the liver by the circulation, it results 
that then the saccharine matter accumulates, and that its 
proportion augments in the hepatic tissue after death. Thus 
the tissue of the liver is always more saccharine the day 
after the animal is killed than on that on which it is killed, 
and sometimes this difference is in considerable proportion. 
All the estimations which have been made of the sugar 
in the liver must therefore be repeated after the knowledge 
of these new facts. 
“To sum up, the only object of my work for the moment, 
is to prove that the sugar which is formed in the liver is not 
produced at once in the blood, but that its presence is con* 
stantly preceded by a special matter deposited in the tissue 
of the liver, and which immediately gives rise to it. I have 
decided on publishing this still unfinished work, because it 
has appeared to me useful, for the solution of the glucogenic 
question with which we are occupied, to draw the attention 
of chemists to phenomena which are not known to them, and 
which appear to me of a nature to change the point of view 
in which we now stand in order to comprehend chemically 
the production of sugar in the liver Indeed, it is now no 
longer necessary to construct hypotheses as to the source of 
the sugar in the liver, nor as to the possibility of the direct 
and immediate separation of such and such an element of 
the blood in order to produce this sugar. We must endea- 
vour to isolate this singular hepatic matter which pre-exists, 
to ascertain how it is secreted in the liver, and how after- 
wards it undergoes the successive transformations which 
change it into sugar. There is probably between these two 
extremes — the insoluble matter as it is secreted by the vital 
action of the liver and the sugar which emanates from it and 
issues from the organ with the blood of the hepatic veins — a 
series of intermediate formations which I have not seen, but 
which chemists will doubtless discover.” 
