Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

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Introduction

Materia Alementaria

of vegitable aliments to be a process, very much resembling or the same as fermentation, and as the product of fermentation out of the body, is an acid, he concluded, it existed in a larger quantity in the stomach, I need not trouble you with arangements or processes to refute this doctrine. To our Countryman Dr Bland of Virginia we are indebted for the discovery of digestion, being carried on by the Gastric Juice. This doctrine was afterwards taught in Europe by Spallanzini and J. Hunter, the experiments of my injenious and much lamented friend & pupil Dr Young made on the Juice of Stomachs of many living animals, and never could detect any thing like a vegitable acid, but in most cases (but in most cases) a very small portion of an acid which he afterwards found to be phosphoric, so far am I therefore from believing with Dr Cullen that a vegitable, or indeed any acid, exists in a perceptable quantity in a healthy stomach, that I should want no stronger proof of disease, were I certain of its presence, the experiments of Dr Hardies and J. Hunter on the stomachs of various animals go also to prove the truth of the above opinion, as they were never

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Gastric Juice. This was first proposed with Spallanzini and coroborated by many among which last is Dr Dorsy in his inaugural Dissertation, who recommended the further trial of it in strong terms. In the case of Mr Shaw who labored under symptoms of calculous 10 years and for whom all the solvents had in vain been try’d, he had an ample opportunity of trying its powers, consequently the patient being brought to the Hospital and refusing to submit to an operation, he order'd four ounces of the gastric Juice taken from a hog to be injected into the bladder and repeated dayly, this was in the month of March, after 4 or 5 times repeating the injection which had occasioned no inconvenience to the patient, the urine passed depositing a copious sandy sediment and after a short time the symptoms wholy disappear'd upon discontinuing in the month of April the urine became natural and some of the symptoms retuned he again order’d it to be repeated and in a short time the patient was discharged cured. The Gastric Juice of the hog is found to be the best safest and most active. That we may not be discourag'd I shall state two propositions, 1st It is proved that we have solvents of calculi when tested out of the body & 2d that our medicines may and do reach the bladder and organs unchang'd, when they have been taken into the system by the stomach, as have been proved by a number of experiments.