Word: dragstedt
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...Chicago's Billings Hospital, 97 men & women suffering from severe stomach and intestinal ulcers have submitted during the past three years to a revolutionary operation for their disorder. Its discoverer: Dr. Lester Reynold Dragstedt, gentle, stooped professor of surgery at the University of Chicago Medical School. His operation: opening the patient's chest above the diaphragm, cutting the two vagus nerves where they lead to the stomach and intestines...
...last week Dr. Dragstedt's operation, now tested by many another surgeon, had stirred plenty of interest among ulcer specialists. Because peptic ulcers may recur in five-year cycles, Dr. Dragstedt and other investigators were not yet ready to pronounce the three-year-old operation a permanent cure. But so far, there had been no relapse after a vagus operation...
Overstimulated Stomachs. Dr. Dragstedt made his discovery while studying the secretion of gastric juices in the digestive system. Ulcers result from the secretion of abnormally large amounts of gastric acid. The normal stimulus for gastric secretions is eating. What puzzled Dr. Dragstedt was the fact that ulcer patients secrete large amounts between meals, especially at night, without any obvious stimulus...
Doctors have long suspected that stomach ulcers, popularly considered an occupational disorder of business executives, doctors, taxi drivers, newsmen and others who work under stress, have their root in the nervous system. If so, Dr. Dragstedt reasoned, overstimulation of the nerves must somehow be responsible for the abnormal secretions of gastric acid. When he tested his theory, he discovered that the operation did indeed greatly reduce the amount of gastric juice in the digestive system. Cutting the vagus nerves just above the stomach slows digestion, but seems to have no serious effect on other organs...
Gastric Juice. Total loss of gastric juice causes death in five to eight days, unless Ringer's solution (sodium chloride, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium bicarbonate and distilled water) is injected into the veins. Even so death is delayed at the most 76 days.?Chicago's Lester Reynold Dragstedt and James C. Ellis...