The diseases of the stomach / by Dr. C.A. Ewald.

  • Carl Anton Ewald
Date:
1900, ©1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The diseases of the stomach / by Dr. C.A. Ewald. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    34/634 (page 20)
    passage of the instrument. I passed the tube while the patients were in bed a short time before breakfast, but I obtained only small quantities of clear mucus, at times of a yellow color. This mucus, although having a feeble acid reaction several times, never gave a reaction with the tropaeolin or the phloroglucin-vanillin tests. It may be objected that these were patients with diseased stomachs; yet they always secreted gastric juice with hydrochloric acid after taking food. It is self-evident that patients who are suffering from hypersecretion of the gastric juice, whose stomachs, therefore, are never empty, but always contain a certain amount of secretion, ought not to be employed for such experiments; on the other hand, it is wrong to introduce distilled water into the stomach and then aspirate it, because this produces a more or less energetic secretion of hydrochloric acid. At all events, the contradictory results given by the above writers show that idiosyncrasy causes some to react more easily than others, and, as we shall see later on, this may under certain conditions even lead to a pathological increase of the secretion. [There has recently been considerable discussion as to the con- tents of the stomach while fasting, for the reason that the answer to this question is of importance in the condition known as continuous hypersecretion (see Chapter XI). Probably the best results obtained are those of Martius,* who made experiments on 16 healthy soldiers; while fasting, the tube was introduced and the contents of the stomach were aspirated. In order to eliminate any irritation of the gastric mucosa from the tube the manipulations were per- formed as rapidly as possible. On an average only 5 seconds were needed to insert the tube and T to 8 seconds for aspiration. In all cases Martius obtained stomach contents which contained hydrochloric acid; the quantity of the stomach contents varied from 3 to 30 c. c. (5tV-J)| ^^^ acidity from 10 to 40 (0-4: to 1*5 per mille HCl). Schiile f experimented on 9 subjects, 6 of whom had previously been trained. In 31 out of 34 trials the stomach contained 2 to 23 c. c. ( 31—vj) of acid fluid. Free hydro- * [Mai-tius. Ueber den Inhalt des gesunden nuchternen Magens. Deutsch. med. Wochenschr., Aug. 9, 1894, p. 628.—Ed.] f [Schiile. Berl. kliii. Wochenschr., 1895, No. 53.—Ed.]