Effect of pituitary stalk section on the development of cinchophen ulcer in the canine stomach with special reference to the hypothalamo-neurohypophyseal system and adrenal gland.

Neurohumoral and psychosomatic factors are now generally regarded as playing an important role in human gastroduodenal ulcer. If these factors are associated with the pathogenesis and recurrence of the ulcer, consideration should be given to a neuro-endocrine mechanism, operating perhaps through the hypothalamus and the pituitary, and the adrenal gland. Many investigators (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) have described hemorrhages, erosions and ulcers in the stomach and proximal duodenum following experimental irritation or damage to the hypothalamus. But, these lesions are always of an acute type devoid of chronic features. Cushing (7) was the first to notice the erosions and acute perforations of the stomach after operation on brain tumors. According to him, intracranial lesions that affect the hypothalamus, particularly the tuber cinereum, or the conduction pathways leading from the hypothalamus to the efferent nucleus of the vagus are prone to cause gastric ulcers presumably due to parasympathetic stimulation, probably due to sympathetic paralysis. On the contrary, Keller's work (6) indicates that after bilateral vagotomy the placing of a lesion in the brain-stem is followed by focal hemorrhages in the stomach, identical in all respects with those observed following brain-stem lesions with the vagi intact. Then, if Keller's work can be confirmed, there could be no boubt that interruption of the vagal route leaves open a