in 1917, working on rabbits, traced the degenerative
changes in the parenchymatous tissue of the pancreas after ligation of
the ducts, and found that the islets remained normal and that the
animal did not develope glucosuria as long as the islets were left intact,
The first attempt to utilize the pancreas in defects of carbo-
4Af~t^At*Vl 1\)f
hydrate metabolism we^e made by Minkowski xX7 . ( This worker tried tho
Pf*^*
effect of pancreatic feeding [with no bene^lfml results. Up to the
present time only useless or even harmful effects have been obtained
from repeated attempts to use this method.
KnowltonW Starling^^, in 191E, published experiments which
showed a marked decrease in the power of using sugar of a diabetic
heart perfused outside the body./ as compared v/ith a normal heart und$r
similar conditions. Maoleod^ffrearce^ ?'' . using eviscerated animals! \r-
-r^ \
_were unable to confirm the above results. Pat fc BITS oi]P& Snarling\ ' H
subsequently pointed out that a serious error was involved in the eaifly
experiments due to (1) excess glycogen present in diabetic hearts,anc|
(£) to the irregular disappearance of glucose from the lungs •|
Murlin'"...-•* prepared an alkaline extract of pancreatic tissue and i
after injection of this solution, secured a reduction in sugar excretjed
in a diabetic animal. Kleiner
U8 y
has pointed out that the reduction
secured by Murlin might be due to the alkali per se- Kleiner himself
has shown that "unfiltered-water extracts of fresh pancreas diluted with
^*^
HaCl when administered slowly usually resulted in a marked de*
crease in blood sugar." There was no compensating increase in urine;
i.
if
sugar, but rather a decrease, which Kleiner suggests may be partly due
o
to a temporary toxic renal effect. Hemoglobin estimations made during
the experiment showed that the reduction in blood sugar was not a dilu-*
tion phenomenon. PaulescoHy* has recently demonstrated the reducing