152 EXPERIMENTS ON THE LIVER OF ANIMALS. 
mation, so as to ascertain whether, during this interval, the 
quantity of sugar had augmented. This comparative deter¬ 
mination was made in the following manner: 
A sheep’s liver, taken shortly after the death of the animal, 
was subjected for an hour and a half to the action of a current 
of water entering by the vena porta and issuing from the 
inferior vena cava. 
After this washing, the liver, which weighed 900 grammes, 
was divided into two portions, of the same weight each, about 
450 grammes. 
One of these halves was carefully minced and subjected 
to decoction in boiling water; the liquid produced by this 
decoction was slightly concentrated, precipitated with sub¬ 
acetate of lead, and the excess of the lead salt removed by 
carbonate of soda. The filtered liquor was heated by the 
cupreo-potassic reagent which, under the influence of ebul¬ 
lition, gave a voluminous reddish-yellow precipitate of 
hydrated sub-oxide of copper. 
This precipitate of suboxide of copper, being collected 
on a filter, washed and calcined for a long time in a 
platinum crucible, in contact with the air, to transform it 
into binoxide of copper, left a residue of this oxide weighing 
0-123 gr. 
After twenty-four hours, the second half of this liver, 
w hich had been left alone, v’as subjected to the same operation 
as the first. It was treated with w r ater, precipitated w 7 ith 
sub-acetate of lead, then with carbonate of soda, then put in 
contact, when boiling, with the cupreo-potassic reagent. 
The reddish yellow precipitate of suboxide of copper, col¬ 
lected on a filter, and calcined, in contact with the air, to 
transform it into black binoxide, left a residue of this oxide 
weighing 0102 gr. 
The result of this experiment is, that notwithstanding 
washing with a current of water for an hour and a half, the 
liver contained a considerable quantity of glucose; and, 
moreover, that this quantity had not increased in this organ when 
left alone for twenty four hours. 
I attained the same result in two other experiments in 
which I determined the w r eight of the soluble matters existing 
in each half of the same liver, before and after the lapse of 
twenty-four hours. This quantity, instead of augmenting, 
had undergone a slight diminution. 
I have said above that the cause of the error which 
supposes that sugar is formed in the liver after death, is the 
insufficiency of the means employed to wash the organ. A 
current of water taken for forty minutes merely through the 
