The Metabolism of Carbohydrates. Part III

IN 1919 the author, in collaboration with Pryde [Hewitt and Pryde, 1920], initiated a systematic research on the permeability of the living intestine to various carbohydrates, particularly the biologically important hexoses and their methylated derivatives.It was hoped in this way to gain some information as to the effect of configuration on the processes of absorption, and as the structural chemistry of the monosaccharides is known with some definiteness, it was thought that the observations would offer some insight into the initial stages of the metabolism of carbohydrates.The work was abandoned, however, after only a few preliminary experiments, owing to the discovery of optical changes which were interpreted as showing the conversion of the stable a and ,B isomerides of glucose, fructose and galactose, in part at least, into the highly reactive y-modifications.The results of this research were published in 1920 and an extension of the work in 1921 [Hewitt and de Sousa, 1921], while so far the original scheme has not been carried out.In this paper it is proposed to communicate experiments on the relative rates of absorption of d-glucose, d-fructose and d-galactose from the small intestine.PREVIOUS WORK.