Experiments on animals / by Stephen Paget ; with an introduction by Lord Lister.

  • Stephen Paget
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Experiments on animals / by Stephen Paget ; with an introduction by Lord Lister. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    properties the same. ... I had soon to give up my first point of view, because this question of the existence of a sugar-producing organ, that I had thought such a hard problem of physiology, was really the first thing revealed to me, as it were of itself, at once.” He kept two dogs on different diets, one with sugar, the other without it ; then killed them during digestion, and tested the blood in the hepatic veins :— “ What was my surprise, when I found a considerable quantity of sugar in the hepatic veins of the dog that had been fed on meat only, and had been kept for eight days without sugar : just as I found it in the other dog that had been fed for the same time on food rich in sugar. . . . “Finally, after many attempts—apres beaucoup d'essais et plusieurs illusions que je fus oblige de rectifier par des tdtonnements—I succeeded in showing, that in dogs fed on meat the blood passing through the portal vein does not contain sugar before it reaches the liver ; but when it leaves the liver, and comes by the hepatic veins into the inferior vena cava, this same blood contains a considerable quantity of a sugary substance (glucose).” His further discovery, that this formation of sugar is increased by puncture of the floor of the fourth ventricle, was published in 1849. ^ is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Claude Bernard’s single-handed work in this field of physiology and pathology :— “As a mere contribution to the history of sugar within the animal body, as a link in the chain of special pro¬ blems connected with digestion and nutrition, its value 3°
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