y other cause. A child may be allowed to eat any and all
kinds of unwholesome and unsuitable food. When the stomach rebels,
showing the serious danger signals of nature, medicines are given but
the diet is unheeded, until the time comes when even the medicines
fail to give temporary relief, and the organs of digestion are in some
instances permanently impaired.

~Disturbed Secretory Processes.~--Consensus of opinion goes to show
that the majority of cases of acute and chronic gastritis (catarrhal)
and gastric ulceration are due primarily to a disturbance of the
secretory processes, while the impaired motility and lack of tone in
the stomach probably influence their development and aggravate the
disease already present.

~Composition of Gastric Juice.~--In a former chapter the processes of
gastric digestion were explained. The gastric juice, composed of from
0.2 to 0.3% free hydrochloric acid and several important enzymes and
lipases, which act upon the proteins and emulsified fats, must be
sufficient in quantity to assure good digestion, and when anything
arises to interfere with the secretion of this fluid a deviation from
the normal is bound to occur.

~Disturbed Motility and Tone.~--Again, it has been proved that good
gastric digestion, like good intestinal digestion, depends more or
less upon the way in which the food mass is mixed with the digestive
juices and moved along the alimentary canal. Anything which interferes
with the secretion of the juices or delays the food over its normal
length of time in the stomach surely exerts unfavorable influences on
the general metabolism of the food, for while, as we have already
found, gastric digestion is not essential to the final utilization of
the food in health, in disease it undoubtedly exerts a marked
influence upon the general nutrition of the individual.

HYPOCHLORHYDRIA

The lack of hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice lowers the
resistance to bacterial action, for this constituent exerts a decided
germicidal influence in gastric digestion, preventing fermentation
with the production of organic acids and probably alcohol. In
conditions due to hypochlorhydria (lack of hydrochloric acid) foods
which leave the stomach quickly must be given with enough of the other
necessary constituents in their simplest and most easily digested form
to balance the diet and prevent the occurrence of the other disorders
as troublesome as the original disorder.

~Dietetic Tr