The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-08-09
ROFNTCEN RAYS
ARE TO BE USED TO
WATCH DIGESTION
Opens a New Chapter in Study
at Harvard Medical School
Movements of Cats Stomach
VisibIy Reproduced-Peace-
full Mind Necessary.

BOSTON, Mass, August 8-From
the very beginning of creation men
and animals have possessed stomachs
and for hundreds of years inquisitive
humanity, with a curiosity that prob
ably long antedated Galen's second
century theory of the -four functions"
of that necessary organ, has been try
ing to find out how this omnipresent
possession actually carries on busl-
ness. There was no man so poor as
not to have a stomach and no man wise
enough to devise a method of looking
into it's private laboratory during the
normal business hours. A few scat
tered experiments on animals during
the early 18th century has added very
little to what had been known in the
second, for to study the stomach sue
cessfullly it was necessary that the
owner of it should be comfortable and
under 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 interior of living
bodies and the use of 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 at
tention is an interesting chapter in
modern Sclentlnc 1nVeSllSdllOu
Use Cats Stomach.
The operations OF a cats digestive
organs, so far as they are yet known,
are very much like manS-at least
very much as mans would be II ne
ate leisurely and didn't rush back 10
business five minutes afterWard. But
a cats stomach is not impervious to
the X-ray and an ordinary X-ray pict-
ure taken through the middle of cat
would give no tangible result what
ever If the cat had swallowed a small
metal button, however, the A-ray
would produce a shadoWgraph 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 practical shadow
of the stomach itself would become
visible on the luminous screen of the X
raw apparatus. This is the basis Of Or.
Cannon's remarkable series of expert
ments, more recently duplicated by the
French scientists, RouX and Baltha-
zard. The cat, after a fast of some II
hours, or about as long as consclen-
tious housekeeper would consider nee
essary to prepare the appetite for
mouse catching eXpedltlonh was given
a substantial meal of bread softened
with milk and mixed with subnitrate
of bismuth, a harmless, non-irritatlng
powder which presents the necessary
conditions Of being impervious to the
X-ray. Then the cat was placed in a
position to be observed, arranSod
especially with q view to the anlmaIS
philosophic content during the ensuing
process of digestion. The average DO
mestic pussy it was found, would lie
for hours without attempting to dlsar-
range the few straps necessary 10 keep
her in the proper position, although the
average Thomas cat seemed to consider
bo
indignity. The difference although
this is not a matter of scientific opln-
ion, is perhaps simply one of sex dis
tinctions.
Outlines Are Clear.
Within five minutes after having
eaten her meal of bread, milk and
bismuth the outline of the cats stom-
ach as represented by it's contents, be-
came visible on the screen of the X-ray
apparatus, the screen being above the
cat and the mechanism 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 be-
comes familiar in his text book of
physiology. For a few minutes this
pear-shaped shadow remains quiescent,
but from this time on, until bread and
subnitrate Of bismuth have left the
stomach, the inner mechanism works,
under ordinary conditions, with clock
like regularity and the outline of the
shadow is in constant motion, ViSibly
undulating in mOnotonous response to
a series of waves passing over its sur
face and showing plainly not only the
method by which the stomach churns
and digests it's 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 and moving toward what
might be called the threshold of the in
testines, that is to say, the smaller end
of the stomach that corresponds in the
familiar description to the stem end
of the pear, recur at l0-second inter-
walls; when one wave is just beginning
several others may be seen running
on ahead of it. During a single period
of digestion their number reached the
amazing total of $500 succeeding
waves.
Waves of Digestion.
That such waves existed and played
an important part in the daily routine
of digestion was known to science long
before the use of the X-ray revealed
them actually in motion. What had
not been either known or theorized,
however, was that they extended over
only about half the stomach thus di-
viding that useful piece of animal me-
chanism into two distinct divisions,
the one a reservoir for food and the
other a churning apparatus for digest
ing it. The food entering the stomach
passes first into this reservoir, roughly
speaking, the large half of the organ
into which the aesophagus enters and
from this reservoir it is fed slowly and
Systematically into that portion of the
stomach where the thousands of mo-
notonously regular waves proceed to
churn and digest it. This involuntary
muscular action slowly and surely
forces the food onward through the
pylorus-the keeper of the gate"
as the ancients long ago christened the
little valvular doorway that opens or
closes the lower end of what they
might also have called the house Of di-
gestion. Naturally the actual process
of digestion slowly empties the cardiac
or reservoir part of the stomach, the
size of the pyloric part increasing
slightly as the other grows smaller
The food as watched in the X-ray
shadowgraph, moved into the intes-
tines, one might say, by occasional
Jumps past the keeper of the gate.
Mind Plays Important Part.
One of the interesting facts visibly
illustrated by this curious shadow pan
tomime is the close relation between the