EVIDENCE ON THE GENESIS OF PEPTIC ULCER IN MAN

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that prolonged continuous acceleration of acid secretion in the stomach by the repeated administration of histamine in beeswax results regularly in the development of duodenal ulcer in a wide variety of laboratory and domestic animals.1Somewhat earlier it was shown that in dogs the maintenance of hyperacidity by continuous stimulation of the vagus2or by continuous sham feeding3resulted in ulcer. While all these stimuli seem to cause ulcer by a common mechanism, namely by effecting a continuous hypersecretion of acid in the stomach, not one of the three is ordinarily operative in human beings subject to ulcer. It was with the purpose of discovering some stimulus which results in definite, sustained acceleration of acid production and which may have been recurrent in the ordinary course of life in ulcer patients that our studies were undertaken. We found that day to day life