THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. g r 



.nhiv produce no effect, because it will lie unaffected in the stomach for 

 f.onrs. Thus in surgical shock or in advanced alcoholic coma it is not 

 bj any means rare to find that repeated doses of drugs have been given 

 with no result for the time being, but as the patient recovers, and absorp- 

 tion is renewed, the greater part of the combined doses is absorbed at once, 

 and the patient is more or less poisoned by the aggregated medicinal doses 

 which he has received. While it is true that patients in this condition, if 

 skillfully treated, rarely meet with this accident, I believe that in many 

 '>ther instances, where the state is less grave, the slow absorption of the 

 medicines given is not considered; that the physician is content to give 

 i he medicine, and then to regard it as physiologically active, without con- 

 sidering the possibility of gastric torpor. In some chronic conditions the 

 -low absorption of a remedy is not disadvantageous, but in acute cases 

 Us absorption may be of vital importance. It therefore occurred to me 

 that it might be possible to combine with a remedy another substance not 

 possessed of general physiological action, but capable of stimulating the 

 gastric mucous membrane so that it would have its absorption functions 

 increased. It is well known, of course, that iodide of potassium, when ab- 

 sorbed, is speedily eliminated by the salivary glands, probably in the form 

 of iodide of sodium. Different investigators have studied the rapidity of 

 this elimination, and have found that it usually begins in from ten to 

 fifteen minutes, or a little longer, and lasts over many hours. The iodine 

 can be tested for in the saliva by means of starch paper and fuming nitric 

 acid, which will set free the iodine, so that the iodine-starch test can be 

 made. Another method of testing the rapidity of absorption would be 

 f>y the administration of rhubarb and developing a red color in the urine 

 by the addition of liquor potassa, but as the test should be made every few 

 minutes, it is much easier to use salivary secretion as a testing medium. 



The methods used were as follows: 



Cachets containing three grains each of iodide of potassium were given 

 to four patients in the wards of the Jefferson Medical College Hospital, 

 none of whom were suffering from any known gastric lesion or functional 

 disturbance, and convalescent. In other words, the stomach of each was 

 in a condition equal to that met with in the ordinary patient. After the 

 lapse of a few minutes the saliva of each was tested with starch and HNuc : 

 every two minutes until the reaction for iodine was obtained. It was 

 found that the reaction was obtained at the following times: 



In the case of the patient G. D. the iodine test was obtained in twenty- 

 nine minutes. 



In the case of the patient B. it appeared in thirty-five minutes. 



Tn the case of the patient L. it appeared in nineteen minutes. 



