Abstract
Occasional experience with the contracting stomach in the open surgical abdomen has been confirmed and enlarged by similar experimental studies on the mammalian stomach. For this purpose, a dog is narcotized with morphia and ether, and opened, under surgical conditions, in the upper abdomen with the least possible mechanical trauma. The stomach is exposed and watched for contractions. If a typical animal, after the lapse of three minutes, two waves of peristaltic contractions occur on the exposed part of the stomach and follow each other at intervals of twenty seconds. With the stomach contracting in this manner, the gallbladder is seized in a crushing clamp for a few moments and released; similarly, the appendix or the duodenum may be clamped and released. In the great proportion of instances, there is a cessation of the stomach's motility for three minutes, more or less, followed by hypermotility after clamping in this manner the gallbladder, appendix, or duodenum. The experimental series is as follows:
In these thirteen experiments, there are eleven irritated gall bladders, eight traumatized duodeni, and five crushed appendices, The respectibe gastric motor responses may be expressed in percentages as follows :
After completing these experiments, the clinical records at Bellevue Hospital, Third Division, were reviewed from 1911 to the present time with the following result:
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