Diabetes : its cause and permanent cure from the standpoint of experience and scientific investigation / by Emil Schnée.

  • Schnée, Emil.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diabetes : its cause and permanent cure from the standpoint of experience and scientific investigation / by Emil Schnée. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Amylum or starch, by the action of the saliva, is first altered into sugar; the sugar is afterwards changed into alcohol, alcohol into acetic acid, and acetic acid into carbonic acid ; so that carbonic acid must be regarded as the final product of sugar. Whenever the production of carbonic acid is diminished or interfered with, the sugar which is very rapidly and in excess formed in the blood, is no longer subservient to the generation of heat in the body ; for it is no longer burnt up, and ministers no longer to respiration ; but it circulates in the blood as a heterogeneous substance, and is excreted by the kidneys. Such is the case in that condition of the body which, in the following pages, is denomi- nated glycosuria. On account of its great diffusi- bility, the sugar rapidly passes through the capillaries of the blood-vessels, whence there arises a possi- bility of its getting into the liver through the vena portce. A portion of the sugar is there changed into the above-mentioned glycogen ; that is, into amylum jecoris (hepatine or amyloid substance), a kind of starch, which is soluble in hot water, and which, by being treated with iodine, assumes not a blue, but a brown colour. From the liver the sugar passes into the general circulation, where it combines with the white blood-corpuscles. In the organs themselves this sugar is partly made use of in the formation of glycogen ; but through the action of the serum in the blood this glycogen is partly changed back into sugar. Only this latter sugar which has been obtained
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