DE. PAVT ON STJOAE EOEMATION IN THE LIVEE. 
599 
was immediately afterwards laid open and the heart instantly excised, and the blood 
collected from its cavities. Both portal and cardiac specimens of blood behaved pre- 
cisely as I have described above, namely, gave no perceptible reduction on boiling with 
the blue liquid, but occasioned a traceable amount of red oxide to collect on reposing 
for a short time. There was no recognizable difference in the amount of deposit pro- 
duced by the respective specimens of portal and cardiac blood. 
That obstruction to the breathing occasions an unnaturally increased amount of sugar 
in the circulation is not only proved by examination of the blood ; but the amount may be 
so large as to lead to the production of a diabetic state of the urine. Thus, in a healthy 
dog at a period of digestion I have obtained the following result. The urine was first 
ch’awTi off and tested, and gave no trace of reaction. The head was then muffled in a 
bladder for an hour, during which time the supply of air allowed was exceedingly 
limited. A state was induced just short of coma or unconsciousness, and when the 
bladder was removed the animal immediately revived. The urine after this operation 
gave an orange-yellow reduction with the copper solution. 
Although the conclusions advanced in this communication stand in antagonism to the 
glycogenic theory of BeejVAED, yet I consider there is only one essential point where 
our experimental results are at variance. It is not that the statements here brought 
forward contradict the accuracy of Beexaed’s experiments. There is no doubt about 
the correctness of these experiments, and my own views are perfectly compatible with 
them. It is the inferences drawn from them that I contend are fallacious. A post- 
mortem condition has been taken as representing an ante-mortem or physiological state. 
At first there was no reason to suppose that this would occasion any error, but by the 
investigations I am detailing, it appears that the two are distinct from each other. 
And when Beexaed speaks of blood removed by the catheter from the right heart of 
the Ihing animal precipitating “ tres nettement le sel de cuivre*,” here my experience 
is directly opposed to him. If a most extensive number of observations enables me to 
speak with decision, I can confidently assert that such is not the normal character of 
blood contained in the heart during life. 
At the time of discovering the fallacy of inferring the physiological state of the blood 
from the character it presented when collected from the heart after death, I still regarded 
the liver as strongly charged with sugar during life. I did not as yet think that the 
saccharine state of this organ displayed by our hitherto adopted mode of examining it 
was due likewise to post-mortem occurrence. My first step was by injections of blood 
through the liver at different pressures, so as to imitate different states of the circulation, 
to endeavour to account for the sugar escaping so largely immediately after death whilst 
it scarcely appeared during life. Failing to discover anything decisive from these expe- 
riments, I began to direct my attention to the state of the liver tissue itself during life. 
I did not regard it as probable, but still, just possible, that the liver, like the blood 
coming from it, might be free, or almost entirely free, from sugar during life, and that 
* Le 5 ona de Physiologie, Paris, 1855, p. 121. 
