Technic for the Study of Secretions from the Oral Mucosa in Humans

Abstract

To our knowledge the secretion from the oral mucosa of humans has been observed 1 , 2 but has neither been collected nor measured. Shafer 3 wrote that, “Secretion of the mucus glands of the mouth have not been obtained in man.” However, Montgomery and Stuart 4 found that secretions from the oral mucus membrane can be directly observed in dogs and humans. They reported that, “Like the salivary glands they do not secrete continuously, but only in response to a large number of unconditioned and conditioned reflex stimuli.” But the repeatedly confirmed findings of a continuous parotid gland flow in humans in the absence of marked exterostimulation and the fact that the oral mucosa and the parotid glands have a similar type of neural innervation suggested the possibility that more accurate measures would be more revealing. We were able to collect and measure both inactivated as well as activated secretion from the oral mucosa of human subjects by means of the following technic:

Small discs similar to those used for the collection of parotid secretion 5 are fastened by suction over different regions of the oral mucosa. The discs consist of 2 separate chambers. Both chambers are supplied with slender rubber tubes which pass out through the mouth. The disc is held in place by means of a slight amount of suction which can be applied by gently sucking the exposed end of the rubber tubing which is attached to the outer chamber. The secretion is free to flow through the inner chamber and push a bead of water through a calibrated capillary tube which is attached to the rubber tubing that leads out from the inner chamber. The secretory pressure of the inactivated as well as the activated secretion is adequate to move the bead of water through the capillary tubing.