The Reaction of Human Duodenal Contents to Acid and Alkaline Meat Mixtures.

The hydrogen ion concentration of the intestinal contents has received considerable attention during the past few years in regard to abnormalities of inorganic metabolism. It has been shown that the pH of the medium probably has an important influence on the absorption of calcium, phosphorus, and possibly iron and magnesium (1, 2, 3). The studies reported in this paper were undertaken to determine whether a predigested beefsteak meal had sufficient buffer quality, when fed at widely divergent hydrogen ion concentrations, to serve satisfactorily as a means of altering experimentally the pH of the upper intestinal tract of man. A preliminary report has been published (4) on the effect of ingested iron on blood formation as influenced by feeding simultaneously predigested beefsteak at one or another pH. In order to determine how far the method was capable of altering the reaction of the upper gastro-intestinal tract, fractional duodenal and gastric analyses were made on five patients after they were fed by stomach tube a predigested beefsteak meal as an acid mixture and after they were given on a subsequent day this food as an alkaline mixture. In three of the patients before the beefsteak was fed, achylia gastrica was demonstrated after the use of histamine, whereas the other two patients showed a normal amount of free and combined hydrochloric acid in a fractional gastric analysis following the administration of an alcohol test meal.