EXPERIMENTS ON THE LIVER OP ANIMALS. 153 
ramifications of the vena porta, is not sufficient to free the 
liver from all its soluble matters, especially when operating on 
a liver which is much charged with sugar, as that of one of 
the carnivora must always be. I thought that by operating 
on a liver less charged with sugar, and prolonging the time 
of the washing, it might be completely freed from all saccha¬ 
rine matter, and that we could then, without altering or 
dividing the organ—in a word, without touching its ana- 
tomical integrity—ascertain whether sugar formed again spon¬ 
taneously in its well-washed tissue. I have ascertained that 
the horse is one of the animals whose liver contains the least 
sugar. 1 have profited by this condition to make a final 
experiment, which has confirmed these. 
At the Veterinary School at Alfort I obtained the liver of 
a horse which had just been killed, and I submitted it for two 
hours and a half to a powerful current of water. Before this 
operation, I had ascertained that this liver contained sugar. 
After this washing, the liver was quite free from glucose; 
for a piece, weighing 250 grammes, yielded not a trace to 
boiling water. 
Having been left untouched for twenty-four hours, this 
liver gave no sign of containing a trace of sugar, when tested 
by reagents. 
This experiment was repeated, in exactly the same 
-manner, on the livers of two other horses, and gave precisely 
similar results: the existence of sugar in the liver, examined 
immediately after the death of the animal; an absence of 
sugar, after being washed for two hours and a half in a 
current of water; and a complete absence of sugar, twenty 
hours after washing. 
In a fresh memoir on the glucogenic power of the liver, I 
shall very shortly have the honour of communicating to the 
academy the result of some experiments on the glucogenic 
matter which exists in the liver, according to M. Cl. Bernard; 
and which, according to my views, is nothing but the 
product of the decomposition, by potassa, of albuminose —an 
organic product, the existence of which, in the liver, I have 
shown, and which was studied and described in a former 
memoir. I shall prove that this glucogenic matter is formed 
with most of the albuminoid substances, and may be 
obtained by operating w 7 ith the albumen of eggs preci¬ 
pitated by alcohol, redissolved in water, and treated with 
boiling caustic potassa. I shall likewise endeavour to show 
the chemical difference existing betw een the sugar contained 
in the liver and that found in the vena porta, and in the 
general circulation of animals fed on an exclusively meat diet. 
—Comptes Rendus, No. 23, June 8th, 1857. 
XXXII. 
21 
