Gastric-juice definition

The object of taking no liquid with meals is that it ensures mastication being more complete, because persons cannot wash the unmasticated food down by drinking, and it prevents the gastric juice from being greatly diluted, and so allows it to digest more rapidly.

He was an active worker in physiological chemistry, and carried out many analyses of the products of living organisms, among them being one of the gastric juice which, at the end of 1823, resulted in the notable discovery that the acid contents of the stomach contain hydrochloric acid which is separable by distillation.

Internally strychnine acts as a bitter, increasing the secretion of gastric juice and the intestinal peristalsis, being a direct stimulant to the muscular coat; in this manner it has a purgative action.

When the secretion of gastric juice is deficient it may be excited by gastric tonics, such as ten grains of bicarbonate of soda and a drachm of compound tincture of gentian in water shortly before meals, and may be supplemented by the administration of pepsin and hydrochloric acid after meals.