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II. — The Varying Form of the Stomach in Man and the Anthropoid Ape. By 

 D. J. Cunningham, M.D., D.Sc, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Anatomy 

 in the University of Edinburgh. (With Four Plates.) 



(Read July 10, 1905. MS. received November 4, 1905. Issued separately February 17, 1906.) 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Introduction 9 



General Form of the Stomach . . . . 11 



Pyloric Canal . . . . . . . 14 



Its Musculature 16 



The Part which it plays during the Digestive 



Process ........ 20 



Stenosis of the Pyloric Canal . . . . 21 



Pyloric Vestibule 25 



Influence of Peristaltic Movements on the Shape 



of the Stomach 25 



The Emptying of the Stomach .... 30 

 Physiological Subdivision of the Stomach in 



the Foetus 36 



Aberrant Forms of Stomach ..... 36 



Hour-glass Stomach 38 



Topography of the Stomach ..... 40 



There are few organs which have engaged the attention of the topographical anatomist 

 more than the stomach, and few which have yielded him so small a reward as the 

 result of his labours. The changes which so rapidly set in after death through relaxa- 

 tion of its muscular wall, combined with the many different forms which the organ 

 may assume during life, make the investigation one of great difficulty. Improved 

 methods, and more especially the introduction of formalin as a hardening and 

 preserving agent, have, however, placed the modern anatomist in a much more 

 favourable position than his predecessor for attacking problems of this nature, and 

 have enabled him to do justice to many views which have been more or less tentatively 

 put forward by the earlier observers in this branch of study. 



The old idea of the stomach as a thin-walled, flaccid, and limp sac may now be 

 said to be a thing of the past. Luschka (30), thirty-two years ago, and more recently 

 Braune (3) have both insisted that the healthy stomach, by contraction of its muscular 

 coat, adapts itself to its contents, whether these be liquid, gaseous, or solid, and when 

 empty and contracted its walls become thick and firm. In this respect, therefore, the 

 stomach behaves in precisely the same manner as other hollow viscera, such as the 

 bladder or intestine. Pfaundler (41), who has recently carried out an elaborate 

 investigation into the capacity of the organ, recognises two distinct types of stomach, 

 which he distinguishes by the terms diastolic and systolic, and he gives four figures 

 to show the characters presented by each. The diastolic stomach is of large size, 

 with lax walls and uniform curvatures. In short, it reproduces the old con- 

 ventional picture of the organ. The systolic stomach, on the other hand, which 

 the author states occurs somewhat less frequently, is relatively small, narrow, and 

 irregular in shape, with stiff thick walls. Pfaundler draws an analogy between these 

 phases of the stomach-wall and the diastolic and systolic conditions of the heart-wall 



TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. XLV. PART I. (NO. 2). 2 



