XVII. A new line of research bearing on the physiology of sugar in the animal system

Abstract

Twenty-three years ago I presented a communication to the Royal Society, entitled “On the alleged Sugar-forming Function of the Liver.” Four years previously, viz., in 1854, whilst conducting experiments directed towards determining the manner in which the sugar presumed, under the glycogenic doctrine, to escape from the liver was destroyed (as it was then believed to be) in the lungs, I discovered that what had been taken as representing the natural condition of the liver, and of the blood escaping from it in relation to sugar, was founded upon a fallacious inference. By those who have only been acquainted with what, in recent times, has been recognised as constituting the state existing, the original position in which the matter stood will hardly be fully comprehended. The strongly saccharine state in which the liver and the blood of the hepatic veins are found shortly after death was looked upon, without any question being raised about it, as representing the state existing during life. Without the slightest prior conception that such was likely to be the case, I found first that the blood between the liver and the lungs was not during life in the condition that had been supposed, and next that what I discovered for the blood applied also to the liver. The evidence which presented itself led me, as is known, to dispute the validity of the glycogenic theory, and the additional information which I have since from time to time obtained has materially strengthened the position I took. To my own mind, the conditions that we have to deal with looked at in their entirety, are totally irreconcilable with the glycogenic theory; but I know that the difficulty which has existed in accounting for the disposal of the glycogenic matter of Bernard encountered in the liver has stood in the way of a general adoption of my views. This subject, however, I am now prepared to approach and consider.