The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-08-30

Boston. August 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 ante-dated Galen's End. Century theory of the -four functions" of that necessary organ, has been trying to find out how this omni- present possession actually carries on business. There was sno man so poor as not to have a stomach and no man wise enough to devise a method of looking in- to its private laboratory during normal business hours. A few scattered ex- periments on animals during the early 18th 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 1t should be comfortable and under completely nor nal conditions. During more recent years, however, the discovery of the K ray has given science a new and won- derful method of examining the interior of living bodies and the use of the x-ray apparatus in the particular study of di- gestive processes to which Dr. w. B. Cannon. of the Harvard Medical school, has been for some years devoting his attention is an interesting chapter in modern scientific investigation.
 The operations of a cats digestive or gans so far as they are yet known, are very much like man's-at least very much as a mans would be if he ate leis- urely and didn't rush back to business five minutes afterward. But cats stomach Is not impervious 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 shadowgraph of that button, and it fol- lows 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 be- come visible on the luminous screen of the X-ray apparatus. This is the basis of Dr. Cannons remarkable series of ex- periments more frequently duplicated by the French scientists, Roux and Bal thazard. The cat. after a fast of some 12 hours. or about as long as consci- entious housekeeper would consider nec- essary to prepeare the appetite Tor a mouse catching expedition, was given a substantial meal of bread softened with milk and mixed with subnitrate of bis- muth a harmless, non-irritating powder which presents the necessary condition of being impervious to the X-ray. Then the cat was placed in position to be observed, arranged especially with a view to the animals philosophic content during the ensuing process of digestion. The average domestic Pussy, 1t was found would lie for hours without at- tempting to disarrange the few straps necessary to keep her in the proper po- sition, although the average Thomas cat seemed to consider the whole matter as something of an indignity. The differ ence, although this Is not a matter of scientific opinion. is perhaps simply 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- sented by It's contents, became visible on the screen of the X-ray apparatus, the screen being above the cat and the me chanism for generating the X-ray being 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 shadow remains ques cent, but from this time on, until bread and subnitrate of bismuth have left the stomach, the inner mechanism works un- der ordinary conditions. with clock-lke regularity and the outline of the shadow is in constant motion. visibly undulating in monotonous response to a series of waves passing over Its surface and show
 ing plainly 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, 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 10-second intervals; 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 2600 succeeding waves.
 That such waves existed and played an important part in the daily routine of digestion was known to science long be- fore 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 of the stomach, thus dividing that useful piece of animal mechanism into two dis tinct divisions, the one a reservoir for food and the other a churning apparatus for dgesting 1t. 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- notonousy regular waves proceed to churn and digest it. This involuntary muscular action slowly and surely forces