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526 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
The Man with No Esophagus
This patient swallowed caustic when a child; his esophagus closed up. Since
then he has been compelled to take nourishment through this rubber tube, thrust
through a hole in his abdomen and into the fundus of his stomach.
Carlson has just published the results of
his study and of his exhaustive experiments
(Carlson, A. J., "The Control of
Hunger in Health and Disease," The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1916), together with a hopeful conclusion
that similar study will lead ultimately
to the absolute control of hunger
mechanism.
Dr. Carlson's work has involved the
accurate measuring of hunger "contractions"
through experiments which would
have got him burned at the stake as a
sorcerer in Galileo's day. Lie has measured
carefully the pressure and the
amount of stomach contraction in human
beings during health and sickness, during
waking periods and during sleep,
during repletion and during starvation,
in new-born infants, in dogs
of high and low degree, in rabbits,
guinea pigs, pigeons, turtles, frogs and
snakes. By inserting into the stomach a
double-walled rubber
balloon, with bismuth
paste between the two
walls, he actually has
seen the movements of
the stomach and photographed
them by means
of the X-ray. To test
the sensitiveness of the
inner stomach wall to
touch, he has scrubbed
out the inside of his
stomach with a stiff
brush attached to a
strong piano wire. He
has gone without food
for days to measure the
stomach reactions during
starvation. He has
tested himself after a
cold bath in which the
water was only a few
degrees above the freezing
point and in which
he remained "as long as
was deemed safe, despite
discomfort and
pain." He has measured
accurately the effect of
smoking on hunger, or the effect of constricting
the belt.
How can such tests be made? If
hunger is merely the feeling of hunger,
how can it be measured accurately? In
general, the following method, devised
by Dr. Carlson, was employed in the
various experiments.
The subject of the experiment is
directed to swallow a small rubber balloon,
to which is attached a very flexible
tube of rubber. The balloon is inflated
after it reaches the stomach, and the rubber
tube is slipped over one end of a
glass tube which has been bent into the
shape of a "U". In this L T -tube there
is a liquid—usually chloroform or
bromoform—and on the surface of the
liquid in the arm of the "U" opposite
the one to which the rubber tube is attached,
there is a float. From the top
of this float there rises an upright, to
the top of which a light marker is at-