III. On lesions of the nervous system producing diabetes

Abstract

The author commenced his paper by stating, that all the experiments he had performed since his communication on the "Alleged Sugarforming Function of the Liver" had been placed in the possession of the Royal Society, had confirmed the conclusions he had there arrived at. As far as his knowledge extended, it might be said that in the healthy liver during life there is a substance which he had spoken of under the term of hepatine, and which possesses the chemical property of being most rapidly transformed into sugar when in contact with nitrogenized animal materials. In the liver after death this transformation takes place, but in the liver during life there seems a force or a condition capable of overcoming the chemical tendency to a saccharine metamorphosis.