EXPERIMENTS PROVING THAT SUGAR IS NOT FORMED IN 
THE LIVER OF ANIMALS AFTER THEIR DEATH. 
By M. L. Figuier. 
M. Cl. Bernard asserts that the liver has the property 
of secreting sugar after the death of the animal. To establish 
this, he takes the liver of a dog, immediately after killing it, 
fixes the trunk of the vena porta on a gutta-percha tube, and 
adjusts the other extremity of this tube to a tap of water; he 
then subjects it for forty minutes to the action of the current 
of water. He asserts that the liver, thus freed from the 
glucose which it contained, and then left alone, becomes 
charged with a considerable quantity of sugar, by virtue of 
what may be termed a posthumous secretion . 
This experiment is not decisive, inasmuch as simple 
washing by a current of water traversing the liver for forty 
minutes is a very insufficient means of freeing the liver from 
the glucose which it contains. I have ascertained by many 
experiments described in my memoirs, that very peculiar 
precautions are necessary to remove, by the action of water, 
all the sugar imprisoned in the hepatic cells. 
But when this washing is properly and strictly performed, 
we find that the tissue of the liver, when it has been 
thoroughly freed from all its soluble products, has not, in 
any way, the property of forming sugar after death. The fol¬ 
lowing is the process which I followed, to render this fact 
quite evident. 
I took a sheep’s liver, shortly after the death of the animal, 
and I minced it carefully. The tissue thus divided was 
passed through a fine hair sieve. What passed through the 
sieve was a true pulp, in which the hepatic tissue was in 
a great state of division. I washed this pulp in cold water, 
by decantation, a great many times. After this treatment 
there remained an almost colourless mass, containing no 
glucose. It was then left to itself for twenty-four hours, to 
ascertain whether any sugar would be formed. Now, the 
water in which this fibrous mass was boiled, after this time, 
did not contain the least trace of glucose. Thus, the sub¬ 
stance of the liver, when well freed from sugar by a rigorous 
washing, does not become charged with a fresh quantity of 
sugar after a certain time. 
But to decide positively whether the liver secretes sugar 
after the death of the animal, it was necessarv to determine 
by chemical analysis the quantity of sugar existing in a 
washed liver, and, after twenty-four hours, to repeat this esti- 
