112 
Sugar-coated  Pills. 
{Am.  Jour.  Pharm„ 
Mar.,  1877. 
The  most  valuable  and  most  satisfactory  experiments  ever  made  to 
test  the  digestive  power  of  the  gastric  juice,  both  in  and  out  of  the 
stomach,  were  those  made  by  Dr.  Beaumont  upon  his  subject  St. 
Martin,  in  whom  there  existed,  as  the  result  of  a  gun-shot  wound,  an 
opening  leading  directly  into  the  stomach,  three  inches  from  the  car- 
diac orifice.  From  this  opening,  gastric  juice  could  be  obtained  and  the 
process  of  digestion  inspected,  which  afforded  Dr.  Beaumont  unusual 
opportunities  for  experimenting.  In  order  to  show  the  fallacy  of  com- 
paring artificial  digestion  with  the  natural  process,  I  shall  here  quote 
from  one  of  the  experiments  of  Dr.  Beaumont  as  I  find  it  recorded  in 
"  Carpenter's  Principles  of  Human  Physiology,"  page  424. 
A  portion  of  meat  was  submitted  by  Dr.  Beaumont  to  artificial  di- 
gestion, under  the  most  favorable  circumstances,  with  gastric  juice  taken 
from  the  stomach  of  St.  Martin,  which  required  from  11J  o'clock  A. 
M.  to  9  o'clock  P.M.  for  complete  digestion,  while  another  portion, 
exactly  similar,  was  placed  in  the  stomach  of  St.  Martin  at  the  same  timey 
was,  at  one  o'clock  P.xM.,  found  "  to  be  all  completely  digested  and 
gone." 
Thus,  it  appears  that  meat,  when  submitted  to  artificial  digestion, 
even  with  natural  gastric  juice  in  its  nascent  state,  taken  directly  from 
the  living  human  subject,  required  eight  hours  (six  times)  longer  for 
complete  digestion  than  it  did  when  submitted  to  the  crucial  test  of  the 
natural  process,  which  demonstrates  how  fallacious  and  unreliable  must 
ever  be  all  experiments  made  by  artificial  digestion  with  artificial  gas- 
tric juice.1 
In  many,  if  not  in  the  majority  of  cases  in  which  medicines  are 
administered  in  the  pill  form,  I  believe  there  are  actual  physiological 
advantages  derived  from  the  slow  and  gradual  solubility  of  the  pill  mass 
in  the  stomach  and  intestinal  canal.  This  not  only  protects  the  often 
sensitive  mucous  membrane  of  the  stomach  from  the  shock  which  the 
digestion  with  gastric  juice  in  test-tubes,  and  consequently  the  process  under  these 
circumstances  is  never  so  rapid  or  so  complete  as  when  it  takes  place  in  the  interior 
of  the  stomach." 
1  Dr.  Carpenter,  in  commenting  upon  these  experiments  of  Dr.  Beaumont,  page 
424  ("Carpenter's  Principles  of  Human  Physiology"),  remarks  that  this  tardy- 
action  of  artificial  digestion  "is  readily  accounted  for,  when  we  remember  that  no 
ordinary  agitation  can  produce  the  same  effects  with  the  curious  movements  of  the 
stomach,  and  that  the  continual  removal  from  its  cavity  of  the  matter  which  has 
been  already  dissolved  must  aid  the  operation  of  the  solvent  on  the  remainder." 
