Word: stomachful
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ulcer sufferers seem to have an overactive vagus nerve. When it is working too hard, the nerve causes the stomach to secrete too much acid, contract too energetically and spill its contents too fast-perhaps within an hour. The acid irritates an old ulcer or starts a new one. Cutting the vagus nerve is one surgical device to slow down the contractions and the acid output. Dr. Grimson combined this operation with another which short-circuited much of the ulcer area...
...avoid surgery, Grimson and associates found an answer in banthine, a new synthetic drug which they had been testing on high blood pressure. Banthine, taken by mouth in tablet form four to six times a day, has the same effect as cutting the vagus nerve; it slows down stomach contractions so that food is retained there for as long as six hours, and it reduces the flow of corrosive acid...
...Easter time in 1884, the Czarina received what at first glance looked like an ordinary hen's egg, but the shell beneath its white enamel was of gold. Inside it was a golden yolk, and inside that a golden chick. In the chick's stomach was a model of the imperial crown, and inside the crown was a tiny ruby egg. It went over big. "Next Easter," the Czar informed Fabergé, "we'll be wanting another surprise...
...Practical. Chatting with Firbank was hard sledding, because a nervous constriction of the throat reduced him to long spells of involuntary Trappism (during one such spell he spoke to only two people in two years). For the same reason, little food managed to make its way down into his stomach; once, at a banquet given in his honor, he only succeeded in getting down one green pea. Alcohol met with no such obstruction, and flowed down in imposing quantities...
...Special Audience. Satchmo was enthusiastic about the spaghetti and about some Italian mineral water he had found. "I was skoaling with everybody up there in Scandanavia," he explained, "and that schnapps tore my stomach up." He also expressed interest in Roman history: "They tell me that Nero had a chick with him when this joint burnt down." But by all odds the high spot came after Satchmo (who has Baptist leanings and wears a Star of David medallion around his neck) said that he had always wanted to meet the Pope. It was arranged; Satchmo and his wife Lucille were...