The latest work on dyspepsia / by A. Lockhart Gillespie.

Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The latest work on dyspepsia / by A. Lockhart Gillespie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    THE LATEST WORK ON DYSPEPSIA. By a. LOCKHAET GILLESPIE, M.B., M.RC.P.E., MEDICAL REGISTRAR, EDINBURGH ROYAL INFIRMARY. {Reprinted from the Edinburgh Medical Journal for August 1892.) Science is rapidly replacing empiricism in the treatment of gastric disorders, and every month sees some new procedure for gaining new and more accurate knowledge of the processes which go on in that viscus in health or disease. Not only are new methods advertised, but clinical evidence also accumulates with regard to those which have reached, what we might call, the age of puberty. The different tests devised by Ewald and others to demonstrate both the motility and digestive power of the stomach have lately attracted a good deal of attention, both in this country and abroad. As salol splits into phenol and salicylic acid only in alkaline or neutral media, and as it is not absorbed until this action has taken place, Ewald and SievAs proposed to make use of the drug as an indicator of the length of time during which food remained in the stomach. Under normal circumstances, they found that salicylic acid could be found in the urine in from three-quarters of an hour to one hour and a quarter. They concluded, however, that to perform the test properly, the salol should only be given when the stomach contents have become markedly acid,—that is, an hour or an hour and a half after meals. It was soon found clinically, however — Kullmann (1),^ Brunner (2), Decker (3), Leo (4), Pal (5), and Eodczjewski (6)—that although in cases of dilated stomach, especially where the pylorus was much contracted, the salicylic acid did not appear for a considerable time, yet the varia- tions in health were so great as to preclude any useful deductions. More particular statements as to the reactions in health and disease were made by Wolff (12), who found the normal limit to be an hour and a half; and by Haberlin (13), who found tlie reaction delayed in 87 per cent, of all cancer cases examined by him.