The Savannah morning news., 1903-08-09

Boston, Aug. S.-FrOm the very be-
ginning of creation men and animals
have possessed stomachs and for hun
dreds of years inquisitive humanity,
with a curiosity that probably long
antedated Galen's Second Century the
DRY of the -four functions" of that
necessary organ. has been trying to-
find out how this omnipresent pos
session actually carries on business.
There was no man so poor as not
to have stomach and no man wise
enough to devise a method of look
ing into it's private laboratory during
normal business hours. A few scat
tered 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 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 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 scientific investigation.
The operations of a cats digestive
organs, so far as they are yet known,
are very much like a mans-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 impervious to
the x-ray and an ordinary x-ray pic
ture taken through the middle of a
cat would give no tangible result what
ever. If the cat had swallowed a
small metal button, however, the x-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 a practical shadow of
the stomach itself would become WISH
BILE on the luminous screen of the
x-ray apparatus. This is the basis
of DR.. Cannon'S remarkable series of
experiments, more recently duplicated
by the French scientists, Roux and
Balthazard. The cat, after a fast of
some twelve hours, or about as long
as conscientious housekeeper would
consider necessary to prepare the ap-
ton, was given a substantial meal Of
bread softened with milk and mixed
with sub-nitrate of bismuth, a HARM
less, non-irritating powder which pre-
sents the necessary condition of be-
ing inperviouS to the x-ray. Then the
cat was placed in a position 20 ue
observed, arranged especially with a
view to the animals philosophic con-
tent during the ensuing process of di-
gestion. The average domestic pussy,
it was found, would lie for hours
without attempting to disarrange the
few straps necessary to keep her in
the proper position, although the av-
erage Thomas cat seemed to consider
the whole matter as something of an
indignity. The difference, although
this is not a matter of scientific opin-
ion, is perhaps simply one of sex dis
tipctions.
Within five minutes after having
eaten her meal of bread, milk and bis
muth the outline of the cats stomach,
as represented by it's contents, be-
came visible on the screene of the x
ray apparatus, the screen being above
the cat and the mechanism for gener-
atine the x-ray being beneath the sup
port upon which she reclined. The
shadow is thus an outline of the stom-
ach that practically reproduces the
pear-shaped organ with which every
schOolboy becomes familiar in his text
book of physiology. For a few min
utes 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 out
line of the shadow is in constant mo-
ton, visibly undulating in monotonous
response to a series of waves pass
ing over its surface and showing plain
ly not only the method by which the
stomach churnS and digests it's con-
tents, but the way in which it passes
on the digested bread and milk to the
cats intestines. These waves, start
ing near the centre of the stomach and
moving toward what might be called
the threshold of the intestines, that
is to say, the smaller end of the stOm-
ach that corresponds in the familiar
description to the stem end of the
pear, recur at 10-second intervals;
when one wave is just beginning sever
al others may be seen running on ahead
of it. During a single period of d.
gestion their number reached the
amazing total of $500 succeeding
waves.
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 recovered
them actually in motion. What had
not been either known or theorised,
however, was that they extended over
only about half of the stomach, thus
dividing that useful piece of animal
mechanism into two distinct divisions,
the one a reservoir for food and the
other a churning apparatus for digest
ing it. The food entering the stom-
ash passes first into this reservoir,
| roughly speaking the large half of the
organ into which the aesophagus en-
tiers, and from this reservoir it is fed
slowly and systematically into that
portion of the stomach where the
thousands of monotonouSly regular
uaNes nrnceed to chnrn and digest IL