THE NORMAL RANGE OF GASTRIC ACIDITY FROM YOUTH TO OLD AGE

Authors:
  • FVFrances R. Vanzant
    Frances R. Vanzant
  • WAWalter C. Alvarez
    Walter C. Alvarez
  • GEGeorge B. Eusterman
    George B. Eusterman
  • HDHalbert L. Dunn
    Halbert L. Dunn
  • JBJoseph Berkson
    Joseph Berkson
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Abstract
At first glance it would seem inconceivable that for sixty years physicians could have gone on studying gastric acidity in the sick, without, somewhere along the way, pausing to secure standards of normal. There are two explanations for this peculiar behavior of the medical profession: one, that we have always been more ready to study disease and to treat it than to make the basic anthropologic and statistical studies that would enable us to say where normal ends and disease begins; and the other, that it is not easy to get several thousand normal persons to submit to gastric intubation. Much work has been done with medical students and with infants, but, unfortunately, most of the published reports of these studies are useless for statistical analysis because distribution tables were not supplied, and measurements from several age groups were averaged together. Although the literature on gastric analysis is enormous, we