A Quantitative Relation Between the Chloride and Acid Concentrations in Gastric Juice

Abstract

Examination of the literature on the chloride content of gastric juice shows that the usual method for the study of such data depends on their being plotted against the time which elapsed between stimulation and collection of the fluid. Correlation of total chloride and acidity is made by direct visual comparison of such time curves. Regarding the existence of a relation between these 2 variables, 3 different conclusions have been reached: (1) that the total chloride concentration is constant throughout any one experiment. (2) Significant variations do occur, but they are always smaller than the concomitant changes in acidity and bear no relation to the latter. (3) A parallelism exists between such acidity and chloride curves. In the present investigation, decisive evidence is offered for the existence of an exact quantitative relation between the concentrations of acid and total chloride, and an explanation is offered to account for the differing conclusions of other investigators.

Experiments with 5 Pavlov pouch dogs were performed in the usual way. In almost every instance, the chloride values fluctuated within such narrow limits that they gave a distinct impression of constancy. In only 2 of the 19 experiments was the total range greater than 10mM. When the 2 variables were each plotted against the time, an unmistakable parallelism of the 2 curves was noted in 12 of the experiments. In the remainder, the occurrence of such a parallel relation may have been hidden by the combined influences of high experimental errors and a small range in acidity values. These experiments, therefore, support the notion of a parallelism between the chloride and acid curves; they also suggest an explanation for the failure of other investigators to observe this relation.