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398 THE LIVER.
the organs, but perhaps more likely, if the leucocytes do not act as car-
riers, it is formed on the spot from the sugar.1
The glycogen formation
seems to be a general function of the cells. In adults, the liver, which
is very rich in cells, has the property, on account of its anatomical posi-
tion, of transforming large quantities of sugar into glycogen.
This glycogen, which is deposited in the liver as reserve-food, in order
that it can be useful to the body, must at least in greater part be trans-
formed into sugar and supplied to the various organs by the blood. The
question now arises whether there is any foundation for the statement
that the liver glycogen is transformed into sugar.
As first shown by Bernard and redemonstrated by many inves-
tigators, the glycogen in a dead liver is gradually changed into sugar,
and this sugar formation is caused, as Bernard supposed and then shown
by numerous investigators by a diastatic enzyme whose relation to the
diastatic enzyme of the blood is not quite clear.2
This post-mortem sugar formation led Bernard to the assump-
tion of the formation of sugar from glycogen in the liver during life.
Bernard suggested the following arguments for this theory: The liver
always contains some sugar under physiological conditions, and the
blood from the hepatic vein is always somewhat richer in sugar than the
blood from the portal vein. Bernard’s views found in Seegen an active
supporter, as he tried to show by numerous experiments the physio-
logical sugar content of the liver as well as the high sugar content of the
blood of the liver veins. On the other hand the correctness of the
observations of Bernard and Seegen is disputed by many investigators
such as Pavy, Ritter, Schiff, Eulenberg, Lussana, Mosse, N. Zuntz
and others,3 and in regard to the sugar content in the two kinds of
blood we have come to the general conclusion that when only the stasis
and other disturbing influences of the operation are prevented, the blood
of the liver veins, if at all, is only slightly richer in sugar than the blood
of the portal vein.4
The circumstance that the blood-sugar rapidly sinks to |-f of its
original quantity, or even disappears when the liver is cut out of the
circulation, indicates a vital formation of sugar in the liver (Seegen,
Bock and Hoffmann, Kaufmann, Pavy and others). In geese whose
1
See Dastre, Compt. rend, de soc. biol., 47, 280, and Kaufmann, ibid., 316.
2 R6hmann, Verh. d. Ges. deutsch. Naturf. u. Aerzte. Breslau, 1903; Borchardt,
Pfluger’s Arch., 100; Zegla, Bioch. Zeitschr., 16; E. Starkenstein, ibid., 24.
3
In regard to the literature on sugar formation in the liver see Bernard, Lecons sur
le diabete, Paris, 1877; Seegen, Die Zuckerbildung im Tierkorper, 2. Aufl. Berlin,
1900; M. Bial, Pfluger’s Arch., 55, 434.
4
Seegen, Die Zuckerbildung, etc., and Centralbl. f. Physiol., 10, 497 and 822;
Zuntz, ibid., 561; Mosse, Pfluger’s Arch., 63; Bing, Skand. Arch. f. Phy.siol., 9.
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