Ulcers, Anemia & Hogs

Mucin. A new and apparently efficacious treatment for ulcers of the stomach and duodenum was presented before the Chicago Medical Society last week. The stomach is lined with mucous membranes which exude a sticky substance called mucin. Mucin lubricates the stomach. It also combines with hydrochloric acid in the stomach and slows up the digestive action of pepsin. It occurred to Dr. Samuel Julian Fogelson & associates of Northwestern University that lack of sufficient mucin might have a great deal to do with ulcers.

Ulcers may be caused by infections. Occasionally an ulcer follows a blow upon the abdomen or an extensive superficial burn. Cobblers and anemic, dyspeptic maidservants are for some reason prone to develop ulcers.

One or more spots may become ulcerated, the mucosa eroded. The erosion may bare the stomach wall. Nothing then protects the wall from the corroding action of hydrochloric acid and pepsin. Unless the process is halted, the gastric juices digest a hole right through the stomach.

Dr. Fogelson surmised that if he fed patients great quantities of mucin, enough mucin would remain in their stomachs to coat the ulcers against the gastric juices. A surplus of mucin would also counteract the destructive juices. Dr. Fred Fenger of Armour & Co.'s research laboratory in organotherapeutics furnished a supply of mucin from hog stomachs. Dr. Fogelson tried this on dogs. The mucin worked.

When Dr. Fenger supplied hog mucin free from parasites, their eggs and germs, Dr. Fogelson experimented with twelve human ulcer patients. Two patients got drunk during treatments. But their sprees had no apparent effect on the treatment. Eventually all improved. Since then Dr. Fogelson and his Northwestern associates have successfully treated six dozen more cases of gastric ulcer with mucin.

Addisin. Dried hog stomachs are good for pernicious anemia. Last week Dr. Roger Sylvester Morris & Associates of the University of Cincinnati reported that the normal gastric juices of human beings contain "a specific hematopoietic hormone." They are seeking the same "hormone" in hogs, dogs, cows. For the "hormone" they proposed the name "addisin," after Thomas Addison (1793-1860), English physician who first described the illness called pernicious anemia.

Whether addisin is the same as the stomach extract which Dr. William Bosworth Castle of Boston has isolated and, with Dr. Cornelius Packard Rhoads, successfully administered to Porto Ricans (TIME, Feb. 15), was not certain last week.

When the Cincinnatians made their announcement, Dr. William Parry Murphy of Boston and Drs. Joseph Edward Connery & Leonard J. Goldwater of Manhattan announced the preparation of new, more potent liver extracts. These extracts are injected into muscles of anemics. The blood picture improves in a few hours.

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