The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-08-09
TO WATCH DIGESTION
STUDY OF THIS PROCESS AT HAIR
WARD MEDICAL SCHOOL BY x-RAYs.
Movements of a Cats Stomach visibIy
Observation-Disclosures OF Mind Es-
sential to Good Digestion.
correspondence of the indianapolis Journal.

correspondence OF the Indianapolis journal.
BOSTON, Aug. S.-From the very begin
ming of creation men and animals have
possessed stomachs, and for hundreds of
years inquisitive humanity, with a curiosi-
ty that probably long a~ntedated Galen's
second century theory of the -four func-
tons of that necessary organ, has been
trying to find out how this omnipresent
possession actually carries on business.
There was no man so poor as not to have
a stomach and no man wise enough to de-
wise a method of looking into it's private
laboratory during normal business hours.
A few scattered experiments on animals
during the early eighteenth century has
added very little to what had been known
in the second, for to study the stomach
successfully 1t was necessary that the
owner of it should be comfortable and un-
der completely normal conditions. During
more recent years., however, the discovery
of the X-ray has given science a new and
wonderful method Of examining the inter-
Tor of living bodies. and the use of the
X-ray apparatus In the particular study
of digestive processes to which DR.. w B.
Cannon. of the Harvard Medical School,
has been for some years devoting his atten-
eO 0A NAAoPN Al AiOQCAh
scientific investigation.
The operations of a cats digestive organs.
so far as they are yet known, are very
much like a man's-at least very much as
a mans would be if he ate leisurely and
didn't rush back to business five minutes
afterward. But a cats stomach is not i'm
pervious TO the X-ray, and an ordinary
X-ray picture taken through the middle
of a cat would give no tangible result
whatever. If the cat had swallowed a small
metal button, however, the X-ray would
produce a s~hadowgraph of that button, and
it follows naturally if the cats stomach
were filled with any substance more or less
impervious to the X-ray that a practical
shadow of the stomach itself would become
visible on the luminous screen of the X-ray
apparatus. This is the basis of DIR. Cannon's
| remarkable series of experiments, more re-
Gently duplicated by the FNench scientists,
Roux and Ba,thazard.
PREPARING THE CAT.
The cat, after a fast of some twelve hours
or about as long as a conscientious house
keeper would consider necessary to prepare
the appetite for a mouse catching expedi-
| ton, was given a substantial meal of bread
| softened with milk and mixed with sub
nitrate of bismuth, a harmless, nonirri-
| tating powder which presents the neces-
| sary condition of being impervious to the
X-ray. Then the cat was placed in a po-
sition to be observed, arranged especially
with a view to the animals philosophic
| content during the ensuing process of di-
gestion. The average domestic pussy, it was
found. would lie for hours without at
| tempting to disarrange the few straps nee
essary to keep her in the proper position,
to consider the whole matter as something
of an indignity. The difference, although
this Is not a matter Of scientific opinion,
is perhaps sir.ply one of sex distinctions.
Within five minutes after having eaten
! her meal Of bread, milk and bismuth the
outline of the cats stomach as repre-
scented by its contents, became visible on
the screen of the X-ray apparatus. the
screen being above the cat and the mechan-
ism for generating the X-ray being beneath
the support upon which she reclined. The
shadow is thus an outline of the stomach
that practically reproduces the pear-shaped
organ with which every schoolboy becomes
familiar in his text book Of physiology.
For a few minutes this pear-shaped shad-
ow remains qriescent. but from this time
on, until the bread and subnitrate of bis
must nave left the stomach. the inner mech
anism works, under ordinary conditions
with clocklike regularity and the outline of
the shadow is in constant motion. visibly
u~ndulating in monotonous response to a
series of waves passing over it's surface
and showing plainly not only the method
by which the stomach churns and digests
its contents but the way in which it passes
on the digested bread and milk to the cats
intestines. These waves, starting near the
center of the stomach n moving toward
what might be called the threshold of the
i~ntestincs, that is to say, the smaller end
of the stomach that corresponds In the IA
miliar description to the stem end of the
pear. recur at ten-gecond intervals; when
one wave is just beginning several others
may be seen running on ahead of it. Dur
ing a single period of digestion their num-
Der reach the amazing total of 2.6oO sue
| ceeding waves
That such waves existed and played an