230 DIGESTION. 



from the cardiac portion of the stomach. This part he found 

 was always acid, while in other parts the reaction was vari- 

 able. ' He states that after death, there is a distinct line from 

 the right side of the cardiac opening to the great curvature, 

 which marks the division between that portion which se- 

 cretes the true gastric juice and has been acted upon after 

 death, and that which does not produce a solvent fluid. 1 



Although the character of the secretion in different parts 

 of the stomach is not the same in all animals, it must be ad- 

 mitted that in man, the mucous membrane of the stomach, in 

 what may be called the pyloric zone, does not secrete the true, 

 acid, solvent, gastric juice. In other words, this fluid is only 

 produced in those portions of the stomach in w T hich the mucous 

 membrane is provided with tubes lined with cells of glandular 

 epithelium, or what have been called the stomach-cells. 



In most of the modern works on physiology, allusion is 

 made to the probable quantity of gastric juice secreted in the 

 twenty-four hours. The estimates on this point can be only 

 approximative, even in the inferior animals, and they give no 

 definite information concerning the normal quantity in the 

 human subject. Bidder and Schmidt, Lehmann, Corvisart, 

 and others have made calculations of the probable quantity, 

 either by collecting the juice for a certain time and multi- 

 plying the quantity thus obtained by a number to represent 

 the whole twenty-four hours, or by ascertaining the amount 



1 KING, Observations on the digestive Solution of the (Esophagus, and on the dis- 

 tinctive Properties of the two Ends of the Stomach. Guy's Hospital Reports, Lon- 

 don, 1842, vol. vii., p. 147 et seq. The observations of Mr. King, being generally 

 upon subjects that had died of disease, are not as definite and conclusive as might 

 be desired ; but they are valuable as confirming the experiments of Dr. Wilson 

 Philip on rabbits, who showed that tho great pouch was the only part which 

 was digested post mortem, when the animals were killed after a full meal (An 

 Experimental Inquiry into the Laws of the Vital Functions, London, 1826, p. 

 131), and others who have also experimented on the inferior animals. In the 

 celebrated paper of John Hunter on Digestion of the Stomach after Death, read 

 before the Royal Society in June, 1772, it was noted that the softening was 

 always at the great end ( Works, Philadelphia, 1840, vol. ii., p. 147, and Observa- 

 tions on certain parts of the Animal (Economy, London, 1792, p. 229). 



