DEGLUTITION. 207 



Deglutition of Air. In the celebrated essay of Mageii- 

 die on the mechanism of vomiting, it is stated that as soon as 

 nausea commenced the stomach began to fill with air, so that 

 before vomiting occurred, the organ became tripled in size. 

 Magendie showed, furthermore, that the air entered the 

 stomach by the oesophagus, for the distension occurred when 

 the pylorus was ligated. 1 In a subsequent memoir, the ques- 

 tion of the deglutition of air, aside from the small quantity 

 which is incorporated with the food during mastication and 

 insalivation, w r as further investigated. 2 It was found that 

 some persons had the faculty of swallowing air, and, by 

 practice, Magendie himself was able to acquire it, though it 

 occasioned such distress that it was discontinued. Out of a 

 hundred students of medicine, eight or ten were found able 

 to swallow air. 



It is not very uncommon to find persons who have grad- 

 ually acquired this habit in order to relieve uncomfortable 

 sensations in the stomach ; and when confirmed, it occasions 

 persistent disorder in the process of digestion. Quite a num- 

 ber of cases of this kind are reported by Magendie, and in 

 several it was carried to such an extent as to produce great 

 distension of the abdomen. A curious case of habitual air- 

 swallowing is reported by Dr. Flint in his recent work on 

 the Practice of Medicine. 3 



Although the subject of air-swallowing properly belongs 

 to pathology, the fact that the muscles of deglutition are ca- 

 pable, in some individuals, of forcing air into the stomach, is 

 not without physiological interest. 



1 MAGENDIE, Memoire sur le Vomissement, Paris, 1813, p. 13 et sea. In the 

 memoir on the oesophagus, an experiment is described in which a ligature was 

 applied to this canal near the diaphragm, and it was found that "the air, 

 which during the nausea tries to pass into the stomach, is arrested by the liga- 

 ture and distends the oasophagus." (Op. cit., p. 10.) 



3 MAGENDIE, Memoire sur la Deglutition de I'Air Atmospheriqiie, lu d Vln- 

 stitut, le 25 octobre, 1813. 



3 FLINT, A Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Medicine, Philadelphia, 

 1866, p. 367. 



