in DIGESTION IN THE MOUTH AND STOMACH 177 



VII. When we pass from digestion in vitro to consider the 

 natural digestion of food in the living stomach, a preliminary 

 question at once arises, to the effect that it is not possible from 

 the peptonising power of the stomach, as described above, to arrive 

 at any conclusion as to the process and the degree of digestion 

 normally carried on in the stomach. How far do proteins undergo 

 peptonisation in the stomach before they pass through the pylorus? 

 Is it only the solid or coagulated proteins that are wholly or 

 partially peptonised in the stomach, or the natural proteins as 

 well, which we ingest already dissolved ? 



With the object of solving this problem, Jaworski and 

 Gluzinski (1885) performed a series of experiments in the medical 

 clinic of Cracow upon healthy individuals and on those who 

 suffered more or less from digestive trouble, pumping out the 

 contents of the stomach at different periods after a meal, in order 

 especially to determine the quantity of pepsin contained, and the 

 degree of acidity. The gastric contents of a healthy man pumped 

 out three-quarters of an hour or one hour after the ingestion of 

 egg-albumin gave no peptone or syntonin reaction. Seven hours 

 after a meal of beefsteak the gastric contents of a healthy man, 

 which were very abundant and acid, contained many fragments of 

 meat, but only traces of peptone, although the filtrate was capable 

 of digesting bits of coagulated egg-white in the warm chamber, and 

 then yielded a strong peptone reaction. On the other hand, in a 

 person suffering i'rom febrile intestinal catarrh, the stomach, half 

 an hour after the ingestion of an egg, yielded a highly acid fluid, 

 which contained fragments of coagulated egg-albumin, and gave a 

 strong peptone reaction. 



From a number of fairly concordant experiments, these authors 

 concluded that the formation of digestive products in the stomach 

 is usually very small, and that under normal conditions of gastric 

 digestion an accumulation of such products was never present. 

 In pathological conditions, on the other hand, the acidity of the 

 gastric juice and the amount of digestive products might be very 

 much increased. They concluded that the egg -albumin intro- 

 duced passed after a certain time (1 or 1 hours) into the iatestine, 

 almost entirely undigested, and that the more quickly the stomach 

 was evacuated, the more normal was its function. So that, accord- 

 ing to Jaworski and Gluzinski, the stomach must be regarded less 

 as an organ of chemical digestion, than as a receiver providing for 

 the gradual transit of the food into the intestine where true 

 digestion takes place. Gastric disturbance is thus the consequence 

 of abnormally increased digestive chemistry. 



This theory, which tends to minimise the digestive importance 

 of the stomach, appears to us to be exaggerated. These observers 

 have not reckoned with the probability that the stomach walls are 

 capable of absorbing peptone as rapidly as it is formed, so that it 



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