534 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 
Here we are face to face with a man who clearly 
abused his stomach, which, at his very birth, was branded 
with ancestral vice. Food which is the natural stimu- 
lant to the sensitive mucous membrane of the organ, 
was bolted, practically unchewed, every day of his life. 
From being a stimulant when offered in proper form, it grew 
to be an irritant, the difference lying in degree only, not in 
kind. The presence of irritating agents of any description is 
angrily resented by all tissue of high vitality: the mechan- 
ically indigestible matter was promptly rejected. This 
marks the phase of regurgitation. The possessor of the 
stomach finding the regurgitated bolus unaltered in flavor, 
i. e. not objectionable to his palate, subjected it to more 
thorough mastication. This interchanging play was repeated 
until the food had attained the pulpy consistency best 
suited for the work of digestion. This marks the phase 
of rumination. The bolted gross food particles gradually 
ceased to play the réle of irritating agencies; habitual 
recurrence of the events, made them revert to their 
original character, i. e. they again became stimulants with 
the only difference that instead of inciting the churning move- 
ments of the stomach, they called forth propulsive movements 
that carried the offending agents along the path of least 
resistance, namely through the cardiac opening with its 
paretic sphincter. It is reasonable to assume that the nerve 
elements, central as well as local, acquired, pari passu, the 
faculty of responding to these new agencies of stimulation, 
and thus a complete reflex mechanism had been established. 
The higher brain centers were at first actively engaged in 
directing the process of remastication. At last they grew 
habituated to the changed order of things, and the entire act 
lost all the features essential to a conscious effort. 
Thus stands before us in bold relief a beautiful illustration 
of the workings of atavic tendency. Our merycole bears out 
the biological truism that similar conditions are ever produc- 
tive of similar effects, and that every living organism possesses 
the inherent power of adaptation. Two points may be raised 
against the view taken by me: firstly, it may be argued that 
the insignificant number of cases observed and recorded 
