140 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 



syncracies regarding the articles from which we can best ob- 

 tain our nutrition, and the viands we can indulge in with im- 

 punity. One who has much difficulty in dealing with starch 

 will find it easier ordinarily to secure his albuminoids from 

 flesh or nut foods than from the cereals or other vegetable prod- 

 ucts; although, to repeat what was urged in preceding para- 

 graphs, by proper cooking starch may be largely pre-digested,. 

 making it acceptable to the most whimsical stomach. An acid 

 stomach cannot tolerate sour fruits, vinegar, or other acids, while 

 a "hypopeptic" individual enjoys and needs an abundance of 

 fruit acids. And the principle holds in respect of many an- 

 other digestive peculiarity. 



§2. Concrete Examples. — To impress the principle of indi- 

 vidual peculiarities in digestive powers there will be given here 

 graphic illustrations 1 ' of actual analyses of the stomach fluids 

 of two persons of the same family securing their nutrition from 

 the same table. The analyses were made in the Laboratories 

 of Hygiene of the Battle Creek Sanitarium according to meth- 

 ods devised by Golding Bird of England and Hayem and Win- 

 ter of Paris, and extended and perfected by J. H. Kellogg. In 

 the following brief explanation of the methods of examination 

 I follow Kellogg 2 principally. In order to make the analysis 

 it is necessary to extract the contents of the stomach after there 

 has been eaten a given quantity of food the composition of 

 which is thoroughly understood; and, of course, a certain 

 amount of time must be allowed for the action of the stomach 

 upon the^food. By chemical analyses of the stomach fluids it 

 is then possible to determine the relative amounts of the sev- 

 eral digestive agents, and so to calculate the working power, as 

 it were, of the stomach, indicating whether it is normal in all 

 respects or whether it varies therefrom in regard to any of the 

 digestive processes. In making the test at Battle Creek the 



'I am indebted to Dr. J. II. Kellogg and The Modern Medicine Publishing Co. 

 for the use of the plates of the charts. 



'Methods of Precision in the Investigation of Disorders of Digestion — Modern. 

 Medicine Publishing Co., 1899. Also Modern Medicine Library, No. 1, May, 1896. 



