Book Description

Excerpt from Wood's Medical and Surgical Monographs, Vol. 9 Very numerous experiments have been made on dogs into whose pylorus a fistula was established. The food was passed through this fistula into the duodenum, while the opening of the stomach was closed by an obturator. It was easy to keep these animals alive and in good health and nutrition, although the food was unacted on by the stomach, and digestion was exclusively intestinal. It was found that raw flesh was digested far more rapidly in the intestine than in the stomach. In one experiment there disappeared from the stomach in two hours 53 percent, from the intestine 85.7 percent, of the introduced nitrogen. Boiled eggs, rubbed up with salt solution, and boiled connective tissue, as skin, were well digested by the pancreas; while boiled flesh, raw connective tissue, and (curiously) finely-divided casein were not digested in the intestine, but caused diarrh a and were soon expelled. It would appear, then, from these observations, as if the digestive function of the stomach was not indispensable; and, in view of this, another function has recently been assigned to the organ which is, it is maintained, far more important than that of digesting proteids. The prominence given by recent researches to the action of micro-organisms is very great, and we are familiar with the idea that the greater part of the struggle for existence consists in a continuous warfare with these bodies. We know that every article of food or drink we take swarms with them, and the question naturally arose. How are the worst forms of putrefaction prevented in our intestines? How do we exist for a day without infection from the various pathogenic organisms which must perpetually find their way down our sophagus? We know that micrococci and bacteria thrive badly or are killed in an acid medium, and it has been supposed that the stomach, by virtue of its acid secretion, serves as a guard at the upper end of the alimentary canal to arrest or kill off the swallowed germs, which, if allowed passage into the intestine, would there induce abnormal putrefactions or give rise to other abnormal conditions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."