Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Glycogenic function of the liver / by Howard Townsend. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![experiments and their results. One more quotation is all that we will make from Dr. Pavy's interesting, but by no means con- clusive work. He writes : Although I can not attempt to offer an explanation of why the amyloid substance escapes as it does transformation into sugar during life, whilst the effect takes place with such rapidity after death, yet the fact remains the same. This certainly seems a trivial mode of endeavoring to refute M. Bernard's thoroughly scientific investigations, and logical de- ductions. Yet Dr. Pavy has a quasi supporter in one of the ablest physiologists of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, Longet, who in speaking of these views of Pavy, says, they seem to merit consideration, and when speaking of Bernard, says, with- out mistaking the importance of the results obtained by Claude Bernard, we cannot accept the interpretation that this skilful ex- perimenter has given to those facts with which he has enriched the science.—[Longet, Traite de Physiologie, vol. 1, fascicule 3, page 935). This theory of the Glycogenic function of the liver, as estab- lished by Bernard, is now so well known, so generally received, that it seems almost necessary to apologise for occupying the time of the society, in minutely describing it, but we have been tempted thus to do, because of a successful effort in exhibiting this liver sugar from the human liver in an experiment lately per- formed before the class at the Albany Medical College, which was very satisfactory for, as all who have investigated the subject of the glycogenic function of the liver, too well know, it is exceed- ingly rare to be able to detect it in the human liver, while it is the common sequence of an examination of the liver of animals, not but what it is produced in the human liver just as it is in the liver of animals, but in our investigations with the human liver, we very rarely have the opportunity to experiment upon one in a healthy condition. Consequently sugar is rarely found in the human liver. To quote Bernard's own words on this point, he says: As to the presence of sugar in the liver of man, it is evident that in the greatest number of cases where it has been sought after, it was impossible to detect it.—[Lemons de Physiologie, page 182]. And in the same work, he says : Dur- ing severe maladies, particularly acute ones, the nutritive func- tions are seriously impaired, the function of the liver ceases, the liver producing no more sugar](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21159993_0010.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
