Diabetes mellitus: its pathological chemistry and treatment / by Carl von Noorden ; authorized translation under the direction of Boardman Reed ; translated by Florence Buchanan and I. Walker Hall.

  • Noorden, Carl von, 1833-1883.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Diabetes mellitus: its pathological chemistry and treatment / by Carl von Noorden ; authorized translation under the direction of Boardman Reed ; translated by Florence Buchanan and I. Walker Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    asserted by some and denied by others, do certainly oc- cur in the blood, but their action is so feeble that only a very small part of the enormous quantity of sugar which a normal man actually transforms during each 24 hours could be destroyed by them. Careful test experiments have also shown that any difference be- tween the amount of ferment in normal and in diabetic blood is very slight, if indeed there is any difference. We must, therefore, to-day conclude that Lepine's theory has been robbed of all the foundations on which it was based. Moreover, to work further on the same lines means an almost fruitless quest, since all that we know of the more minute processes of metabolism is in favour not of the blood but of the tissues being the actual seat of the decomposition of the sugar. Lepine himself has now also recognised these necessary con- clusions. Cohnheim's Theory.—Another new point of view presented itself when O. Cohnheim published his ob- servations that neither the pancreatic juice alone, nor the muscle juice alone produces any considerable gly- colytic effect; although when the two juices are to- gether allowed to act on sugar, a most energetic de- struction of the sugar ensues. This seemed to prove that, in accordance with the theory of v. Mering and Minkowski, the pancreas gives off something which, when led to the tissues by the blood, enables them to destroy the sugar. Cohnheim gave the name of acti- vator of the pancreas to this substance, and ascribed to it the property of being heat-resisting. Although