54 
Animal  Digestive  Ferments. 
( Am.  Jour.  Pharm,. 
1    February,  1902. 
mont  (15  87-1 644),  should  be  credited  with  the  statement  that  not 
the  acids,  but  a  definite  body  similar  to  those  producing  fermenta- 
tion, was  the  vital  principle  of  the  stomach.  Is  this  a  modern  con- 
struction of  some  of  his  writings,  or  is  it  one  of  those  brilliant  con- 
ceptions several  centuries  in  advance  of  the  times  ?  As  he  termed 
all  processes  accompanied  by  the  evolution  of  gases,  even  the  effer- 
vescence of  carbonates  upon  the  addition  of  acids,  "  fermentation,'* 
our  faith  is  somewhat  shaken. 
That  the  stomach  played  an  important  role  in  the  digestion  of 
food  was  no  doubt  evident  to  physicians  of  all  times,  but  the  value 
of  the  gastric  juice  and  the  existence  of  the  secreting  glands  was 
first  perceived  by  Borelli.    (i  608-1679.) 
With  the  dawn  of  the  scientific  era  and  the  application  of  scien- 
tific method  in  physiological  investigations  our  knowledge  of  diges- 
tion expanded.  In  1752  Reaumur  published  his  investigations, 
carried  out  on  a  regurgitating  buzzard  or  kite,  and  established  the 
fact  that  digestion  is  independent  of  the  mechanical  power  of  the 
stomach  ;  that  a  chemical  change  is  produced  in  the  food  by  the 
juices  of  the  stomach,  and  that  these  latter  have  no  action  on  vege- 
table food. 
In  1772  Hunter  noted  the  fact  of  post-mortem  digestion,  in  which 
the  stomach  itself  is  digested  and  dissolved  by  its  own  juice.  In 
1777  we  find  Stevens  applying  Reaumur's  method  to  a  regurgitat- 
ing man,  but  eliciting  nothing  new. 
Then  followed  the  classical  researches  of  Spallanzani  (1783),  who 
by  ingenious  devices  obtained  from  the  living  animal  (birds  and 
beasts)  gastric  juice  quite  free  from  extraneous  matter.  He  was  the 
first  to  clearly  define  the  marked  difference  between  peptic  digestion 
and  the  phenomena  of  fermentation  and  putrefaction,  and  succeeded 
in  demonstrating  the  potency  of  gastric  juice  outside  of  the  body 
— in  vitro.  Inspired  by  Spallanzani's  observations,  Senebier,  a  sur- 
geon of  Geneva  (Saint  Evangele),  suggested  and  employed  gastric 
juice  in  surgery  in  the  treatment  of  foul  wounds,  sores  and  cancers, 
etc.,  and  his  results  being  communicated  to  Jurine  of  Geneva,  and 
Toggia  of  Turin,  they  (the  former  especially)  made  extended  experi- 
ments in  the  application  of  gastric  juice  obtained  from  various  ani- 
mals—  bullocks  and  sheep.  They  all  observed  that  the  gastric  juice 
had  the  power  "to  remove  all  disagreeable  smell  from  foetid  ulcers; 
to  give  them  a  clean  appearance ;  to  change  the  quantity  and  qual- 
