Unpublished paper, 'Lesions of the nervous system producing diabetes' by Frederick William Pavy

Description

Pavy states that all the experiments he has performed since his communication on the 'alleged sugar-forming function of the liver'' (see AP/41/7) had been placed in the possession of the Royal Society, have confirmed the conclusions he had there arrived at. As far as his knowledge extended, it might be said that in the healthy liver during life there is a substance which he had spoken of under the term of hepatine, and which possesses the chemical property of being most rapidly transformed into sugar when in contact with nitrogenised animal materials. In the liver after death this transformation takes place, but in the liver during life there seems a force or a condition capable of overcoming the chemical tendency to a saccharine metamorphosis. Pavy describes experiments that show that when the medulla oblongata is destroyed, and the circulation is maintained by the performance of artificial respiration, the sugar formed in the liver as a post mortem occurence is distributed through the system, and occasins the secretion of urine possessing a strongly saccharine character.

Marked on front as 'Archives May 1859'.

Subject: Anatomy / Physiology / Medicine / Neuroscience

Received 17 May 1859. Communicated by William Sharpey.

Written by Pavy at Guy's Hospital [London].

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 10 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society as 'On lesions of the nervous system producing diabetes'.

Reference number

AP/42/13

Earliest possible date

1859

Physical description

Ink on paper

Page extent

36 pages

Format

Manuscript