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CHAPTER VII.
THE LIVER.
The liver, which is the largest gland of the body, stands in close
relation to the glands mentioned in Chapter VI. The importance
of this organ for the assimilation of the food-stuffs and for the phys-
iological composition of the blood is evident from the fact that the
blood coming from the digestive tract, laden with absorbed bodies, must
circulate through the liver before it is driven by the heart through the
different organs and tissues. An assimilation of food-stuffs in the liver
.has been positively shown in the first place for carbohydrates in that the
liver constructs a polysaccharide glycogen from hexoses, which according to
the needs is then again retransformed into glucose. The liver is a storage
organ for fats and takes up food fat as well as fat from depots (in
starvation) and as it seems, at least in part, prepares them so that they can
be further used in the animal body.
We are not clear as to what extent an assimilation of products of pro-
tein digestion takes place in the liver. The subject will be discussed in detail
under absorption in Chapter VIII. It is claimed that the liver can serve
as a storage organ for proteins,1
and it is at least certain that it retains
alien protein which is brought to it by the blood.2
The retention
of alien protein stands probably in close relationship to the ability of
the liver to take up and retain foreign substances as a group from the blood.
This is not only true for different metals but also, as shown by several
investigators.3
alkaloids which perhaps are also partly decomposed in the
liver. Toxins are also withheld by the liver and hence this organ has
a protective action against poisons.
The formation of glycogen from glucose is one of the numerous syn-
theses occurring in the liver and this is no doubt the one which takes
place to the greatest extent. Other syntheses in the liver are, for example,
1
See Seitz, Pfliiger’s Arch., Ill and Asher and Boehm, Zeitschr. f. Biol. 51.
2
See Reach, Bioch. Zeitschr., 16 and Pacchioni and Carlini, Maly’s Jahresb., 39.
3
Roger, Action du foie sur les poisons (Paris, 1887), which quotes the works of
Schiff, Heger and others; also W. N. Woronzow, Maly’s Jahresb., 40 and Z. Vamossy,
Orid., 40.
381
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