Although it is generally believed that attempts to improve the resistance of the liver to injury from hepatotoxic agents is a contribution of the present century, elaborate studies in this field were undertaken during the nineteenth century.1 It was, however, the experiments of Opie and Alford2 which led clinicians, at least in this country, to believe that a diet high in carbohydrate offered direct protection of the liver from the necrotizing effects of chloroform. Their work received confirmation in the later experiments of Davis, Hall and Whipple3 and Graham.4 The unfortunate interpretation which clinicians placed on the results of these investigations led them to conclude that a high concentration of liver glycogen would in itself protect the liver from injury from a wide variety of agents, that the detoxifying power of the liver was proportional to its glycogen content and finally that hepatic regeneration would proceed