Studies in the Control of Gastric Secretion
The problem of gastrlo physiology has absorbed the attention of Investigators since the days of the cunning Abbe Spallanzani who performed a series of weird and ingenious experiments on himself and on lower animals, in order to determine the nature of gastric digestion. Although noting the acid character of the juice he failed to recognize its real significance and regarded it as an abnormality. The English physician John Hunter (17) thought acid appeared in the stomach only after death which explained the post mortem digestion of that organ. A young American, John Young, in the beginning of the nineteenth century emphasized the acid character of the juice and named it phosphoric acid. It remained for William Front, an Englishman, to show that the acid in the stomach was hydrochloric acid. Hut it was William Beaumont, an American Army surgeon, and his intractable Alexis St. Martin, the victim of an accidental gunshot wound which resulted in a permanent gastric fistula, who revived the interest in this field in the middle of the nineteenth century. He used Alexis St. Martin as we today use our laboratory animals with the difference that we control our laboratory animals while Alexis controlled Dr. Beaumont. After years of strenuous and diligent work Beaumont published his now classical work "Experiments and observations on the Nature of the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion" in 1833. During that same century Claude Bernard, father of experimental physiology, continued the work on the physiology of the stomach and published his very famous "Du sue gastric et son role dans la nutrition".
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