Page 343 - My FlipBook

COMPLAINTS OF THE DIGESTIVE TRACT. 315

administering antiseptics is not after a meal, or upon the full
stomach, but upon an empty stomach, about ten or fifteen minutes
before meal-time. In order to determine %Yhat action these
bacteria may have upon the digestive process when the conditions
present are such as to permit of their development, I swallowed
a full-grown test-tube culture of the Micrococcus aerogenes im-
mediately after a meal, consisting mainly of bread, potatoes, and
milk. A very disagreeable feeling of distention in the stomach
and bowels appeared after about one and one-quarter hours, and
annoyed me the whole of the next day; after thirty hours I was
attacked with diarrhoea, which I aborted by taking sixty drops
of hydrochloric acid in water after a light breakfast. The effects
of the bacteria did not entirely disappear for some days, and
even on the fifth day I still found them in large numbers in my
faeces.
I attempted to efiect a solution of the second question by the
following experiment: I mixed 2.0 grams (30 grains) of the dif-
ferent kinds of food with 3.0 of saliva, added 5.0 grams beef-
extract peptone-gelatine, which had been infected with Bacteria
aerogene (or, I simply chewed up the food to be tested and mixed
it with an equal quantity of tlie same gelatine). Each mixture
was then poured into a separate test tube, the level marked, and
placed at a temperature of 22° C. The amount of gas generated
in the different tubes would be measured by the rise in the sur-
face of the mixture. After a series of nineteen experiments I
succeeded in getting together a table of comparative values, in
which bread is used as the unit of comparison. (See Fig. 119.)
As expected, it was found that the carbohydrates are particu-
larly characterized by the production of large quantities of gas,
whereas from the albuminous substances only a trace, or no gas
at all, is produced. Among the ordinary articles of diet, bnad
and potato occupy a prominent place as gas-producers, and
should be as much as possible avoided by the dyspeptic.
Of those foods which do not appear in the table, and which
produce large quantities of gas, I may mention all kinds of sweet
desserts, cakes, omelettes, pears, sweet apples, grapes, etc. Cran-
berries and prunes produce no gas, because they do not furnish
a favorable medium for the development of l^acteria; if they are