Observations on the functions of the liver, more especially with reference to the formation of the material known as amyloid substance, or animal dextrine, and the ultimate destination of this substance in the animal economy ? / Robert M'Donnell.

  • McDonnell, Robert, 1828-1889.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the functions of the liver, more especially with reference to the formation of the material known as amyloid substance, or animal dextrine, and the ultimate destination of this substance in the animal economy ? / Robert M'Donnell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    by him, that the liver is not endowed with the power of con- verting its amyloid substance into sugar during life and health. If, therefore, not transformed into sugar, the question naturally arises, What becomes of it ] What is its ultimate destination in the animal economy 1 It is my chief object in the following memoir to attempt to answer this question. I have elsewhere* stated, that although the question must be admitted to be one of the greatest delicacy, yet that it appears to me, on the whole, there is evidence that the amyloid substance met with in the liver is, as it were, on its way upwards towards the more exalted or complex immediate animal principles, and that its conversion into sugar is not its normal destination ; that the process of healthy assimilation tends, if the expression may be used, to promote it from the the rank of ternary (hydrocarbonous) to that of quaternary (azotised) compounds, and that its conversion into sugar is, therefore, a deviation from tins progressive course—a dissimi- lative instead of an assimilative process. In order to establish this view it became necessary— First.—To re-examine, with precision, the facts which have induced Pavy to conclude that the amyloid substance of the liver is not transformed into sugar during life. Secondly.—To investigate the chemical and physiological relations of the amyloid substance, not only of the liver but of other organs and tissues, and test the very interesting results which are for the most part due to M. Charles Eouget. Thirdly.—To compare the portal and hepatic blood with each other, and with arterial and venous blood derived from other sodrces, and consider the relations to each other of the different functions performed by the liver. For if it be true, as Lehmann, Brown-Sequard, and others have asserted, that the fibrine and much of the albumen of the portal blood vanish in the liver, and that, at the same time that it destroys these azotised compounds, it forms its non-azotised amyloid substance and excretes bile, containing so little nitrogen that it need hardly be taken into account; are we not, from the consider- ation of these functions, led to infer that the nitrogen, which leaves the liver by no other outlet, may go forth in the hepatic * On the Formation of Sugar and Amyloid Substance in the Animal Economy. Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, February, 1860.