248 



MR. MORLEY ROBERTS ON THE FUNCTION OF 



these phenomena are additional reasons for extending Wolff's 

 law to all tissues. If protoplasm did not so react there would be 

 no problems to solve. 



Such views on the mammalian gastric apparatus are so 

 obviously supported by the embryology of the organ that there 

 is no need to go into details beyond noticing that in the fourth 

 week there comes the first dorsal bulging in the fore-gut. Of 

 the curiously shaped fundus, Keith has remarked that it is in 

 origin like the caecum, but I do not think it has been suggested 

 that its form has possibly been moulded by the presence of the 

 large air bubble so often seen in X-ray photographs. It is an 

 elastic air-reaction pouch just as the whole stomach itself is a 

 food-reaction pouch. It begau to give way there, but the process 

 was stayed. So far as I am aware, it is not provided with 

 obvious oblique fibres. Further investigation may find them. 



If evolution is still proceeding, is it absurd to suggest that 

 the common disorder known as dilated stomach may be a patho- 

 logical process actually in the process of becoming physiological ? 

 According to some physicians, few modern stomachs do not 

 suffer at times from an amount of dilatation which is patho- 

 logical ; i. e., their gastric musculature fails to react correctly. 

 The stomach may } r et be such a functioning dilatation pouch as 

 to enable the human race to do with no more than one meal a 

 day or even less. Our descendants will have all the more time 

 for work. This by no means implies that the empty stomach 

 should be any larger than it is now in healthy subjects. Before 

 the invention of X-rays the gastric apparatus was always 

 pictured in text-books as usually seen on the post-mortem ta,ble. 

 The dead stomach was shown as the portrait of the live one : 

 the weakened pouch of the sick man as that of the live and 

 healthy subject. But nowadays it is known that such extreme 

 dilatation is natural only when a large meal has been taken. 

 When the healthy stomach is empty it contracts so that it 

 nearly resumes its ancient cylindrical character and is of a size 

 not much greater than that of the small intestine. With further 

 development it might hold still more and yet react in the same 

 way. The suggestion that functional failure or disease which 

 becomes organic and destructive in many, may, in reacting and 

 surviving: organisms, alter their outlook on life and all their 

 activities, seems to me powerfully reinforced by these considera- 

 tions. The disadvantageous variation does work, and finally 

 improves the race. 



It can even be shown that disadvantageous variations actually 

 become permanent racial characters. We may consider hernias. 

 In the prone position of most animals, hernial sacs, now known 

 not to be essentially pathological until they are forced open by 

 mechanical stresses or relaxed by organic weakness, are not a 

 great source of danger. They may even be considered as an 

 additional means of securing the peritoneum to its connective 

 tissue. During the processes of evolution, however, a mammalian 



