that the process of digestion
resembles the process of the germination of vegetables, or of making barley
into malt; as the vast quantity of sugar found in the urine must be made
from the food which he took (which was double that taken by others), and
from the fourteen pints of small beer which he drank. And, secondly, as the
serum of the blood was not sweet, the chyle appears to have been conveyed
to the bladder without entering the circulation of the blood, since so
large a quantity of sugar, as was found in the urine, namely, twenty ounces
a day, could not have previously existed in the blood without being
perceptible to the taste.

November 1. Mr. Hughes dissolved two drams of nitre in a pint of a
decoction of the roots of asparagus, and added to it two ounces of tincture
of rhubarb: the patient took a fourth part of this mixture every five
minutes, till he had taken the whole.--In about half an hour he made
eighteen ounces of water, which was very manifestly tinged with the
rhubarb; the smell of asparagus was doubtful.

He then lost four ounces of blood, the serum of which was not so opake as
that drawn before, but of a yellowish cast, as the serum of the blood
usually appears.

Paper, dipped three or four times in the tinged urine and dried again, did
not scintillate when it was set on fire; but when the flame was blown out,
the fire ran along the paper for half an inch; which, when the same paper
was unimpregnated, it would not do; nor when the same paper was dipped in
urine made before he took the nitre, and dried in the same manner.

Paper, dipped in the serum of the blood and dried in the same manner as in
the urine, did not scintillate when the flame was blown out, but burnt
exactly in the same manner as the same paper dipped in the serum of blood
drawn from another person.

This experiment, which is copied from a letter of Mr. Hughes, as well as
the former, seems to evince the existence of another passage from the
intestines to the bladder, in this disease, besides that of the
sanguiferous system; and coincides with the curious experiment related in
section the third, except that the smell of the asparagus was not here
perceived, owing perhaps to the roots having been made use of instead of
the heads.

The rising in the throat of this patient, and the twitchings of his limbs,
seem to indicate some similarity between the diabetes and the hysteric
disease, besides the great flow of pale urine, which is