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The Lubbock Lake Landmark is located on the Southern High Plains of Texas in Yellowhouse Draw that is part of the upper Brazos River basin. The Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Lubbock Lake fish assemblages represent the first known Quaternary paleoichthyofauna for the Southern High Plains. None of the remains show evidence of cultural utilization. Their significance lies in their record and paleoenvironmental information. The fish assemblages come from two strata from different locations within the Landmark. Of the 845 elements recovered, 184 (22%) are identifiable to family or lower level. The elements overall represent seven families, seven genera, and six species. The presence of most taxa is expected but two taxa have considerable range extensions and at least one was not known to inhabit the Brazos River basin historically. These disharmonious faunal elements have a retreat pattern to the southeast and northeast today. The fish fauna reflects the overall vertebrate record at the Landmark that indicates extensive regional changes occurring in the late Quaternary climates and ecosystems that have led to modern conditions.

Summary and ConclusionsSurgical interruption of the vagus nerves above the diaphragm had no effect whatsoever on the incidence of peptic ulcer produced by cinchophen.

Clean, odor free vertebrate skeletons can easily be prepared in from two days to a week by using bacterial or enzyme maceration in conjunction with other techniques.

SummaryIt has been shown that hyperpotassemia cannot be considered as a contributing factor to the cause of collapse and death in experimental intestinal obstruction in the dog.

(1) The preparation and use of a new test meal consisting of two per cent Liebig’s extract containing phenol red is described. The advantages of this meal over other commonly used test meals are discussed.

Man's interest in his own digestive processes goes back many centuries. | The views on digestion held by all the ancient peoples and tribes were full of magic, mysticism and superstition. Either demons or different humors existed in the body to direct the natural digestive processes. | The ideas of the ancients were not essentially different from those of the Greeks, whose philosophy exercised so profound an influence upon their medicine, or from the ideas of the Romans. | Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, taught that gastric digestion was brought about by a sort of internal cooking or coction, possibly through the agency of the "innate heat11 of the body, derived from the blood,one of the four cardinal fluids. | And this was the belief subscribed to by scientists for the next one thousand years. Scientific thought had been tremendously influenced by the philosophy of Plato, in which reflection and contemplation were uppermost. Observations by the senses, ideas born as a result of observations, experiments to verify these ideas, the study of facts - these were disregarded. Men began to deduce underlying physiological principles and to explain vital phenomena by mental speculations only. This method was to retard the advance of our knowledge of physiology until men learned to think scientifically and to fully appreciate the scientific method.

The physiological control of gastric acidity depends upon the following factors: 1. Strength of the acid secreted. 2. Regurgitation of non-acid secretions from the duodenum. 3. Inhibition of the intragastric chemical phase of acid secretion due to the presence of acid in the stomach and of the intestinal phase of acid secretion due to the presence of acid in the intestine. 4. The intensity of the stimuli arising in the pars pylorica and the degree to which, in a given animal, they influence the intragastric chemical phase of acid secretion. 5. Vagal or cephalic influences. 6. Absorption of water from the gastric contents.

Summary1. The thoracic vagus as seen in 42 dogs that came to autopsy is described.2. A method is presented for its disruption.

SummaryThe average alkalinity of the duodenal secretions was found to be approximately .04 normal and the chloride concentration 307 mg. per 100 cc. These values obtained on secretions from the intact duodenum are in excellent agreement with values previously reported on secretion obtained from isolated duodenal pouches.In a previous communication1 the results of studies on the composition of mixed duodenal secretions were reported. These previous studies were performed on healed duodenal pouches completely isolated from the stomach and every effort was made to avoid all complications which might alter the composition of the mixed duodenal secretions. However, it appeared necessary to confirm these results by different methods which would be free of certain hypothetical sources of error, based primarily on the operative procedures previously employed. A large number of analyses of the contents of the dogs'stomach obtained by lavage 24 hours after a light feeding of milk and syrup have shown that under the...

IT IS DIFFICULT or impossible to determine the incidence of injuries of the hepatic or common bile ducts which occur in the course of operations on the biliary system. Kehr 1 in 1913 reported injury to the common and hepatic ducts fifteen times in one thousand cholecystectomies, or an incidence of 1.5 per cent. Jacobson 2 reviewed the literature up to 1914 and found only 34 cases. Since then, other injuries of this type have been described (Eliot 3 and Eisendrath 4 ), but the reviews do not give an accurate idea of the frequency of injury of the common duct since most cases are not reported. Injuries to the common duct may occur as a result of inflammation of the duct or trauma to the duct. Cole and his associates 5 reported that 76 per cent of a series of strictures were the result of operative injury, Cattell 6 80

Partial gastrectomy has in recent years been coming more and more into prominence in the treatment of duodenal ulcer. The all too frequent occurrence of marginal ulcer after gastro-enterostomy has led surgeons to seek some method of approach to the problem of duodenal ulcer by which the acidity of the gastric secretions could be reduced and the incidence of marginal ulcer diminished. The studies of Klein,1Lewisohn and Ginzburg,2Lewisohn and Feldman,3de Takats,4Winkelstein,5Crohn,6Wilensky and Crohn,7McCann8and others seem to leave little doubt that after partial gastrectomy there is a definite reduction in gastric acidity. When one attempts to explain this reduction in acidity, however, one is confronted with a great deal of conflicting evidence; before the value of partial gastrectomy in the treatment of duodenal ulcer can be determined, some more definite information as to its mode

Attention has been called repeatedly to the similarity between the symptoms of acute high intestinal obstruction and those of duodenal fistula. Without going into a detailed review of theories as to the cause of death after high intestinal obstruction, we may say that considerable evidence has been presented that the loss of the contents of the upper part of the intestine by vomiting is a most important, or the most important, factor. The fact that dogs with a duodenal fistula suffer a rapid drop in blood chlorides, dehydration, rise of carbon dioxide—combining power and death within a few days, as shown by Eisberg 1 and by one of us, 2 strongly suggests that the loss of duodenal fluid by vomiting is of prime significance. Although the loss of pancreatic juice alone produces symptoms the same as or similar to those enumerated above, it cannot be stated as yet that this

I NORMAL MEN AND WOMEN The biologic importance of copper was brought to light by Bucholz and Meissner 1 in 1816, when they identified this element in plant life. Deverzie and Orfila, 2 in 1840, described the presence of copper in animal tissue. It was later recognized that all plant and animal tissue contains traces of copper. However, these traces were believed to be accidental, and no definite function was assigned to the element. Toward the latter part of the nineteenth century, copper was found in the blood of some marine animals. 3 Porter 4 reported appreciable amounts of copper in human blood in 1875. BIOLOGIC FUNCTIONS OF COPPER The function of copper in the biologic organism has, as a result of recent experimentation, become more clearly defined. Copper acts chiefly as a catalyst with reference to (1) growth, (2) respiration and (3) hematopoiesis. Growth. —The earliest function assigned to

To the Editor:— In the article by J. R. Williams "Does Diabetes Mellitus Predispose the Patient to the Pyogenic Skin Infections?" (The Journal, April 18, p. 1357) the author concludes that pyogenic skin infections occur no more frequently in diabetic than in nondiabetic persons, but the statistics presented by him do not bear out his point. In one of the hospitals studied by him 330 diabetic patients were admitted during the years 1938, 1939 and 1940. Eight of these had boils or carbuncles, which gives a percentage of 2.4. During this same period there were 26,879 nondiabetic admissions, among which there were 166 boils or carbuncles. This gives an incidence of 0.6 per cent. In other words, according to the author's own figures boils or carbuncles were four times as common among diabetic as among nondiabetic patients. In the other hospital studied, one is unable to make this calculation because

Posterior gastro-enterostomy performed in properly selected cases has long been accepted as one of the most satisfactory procedures in the treatment of duodenal ulcer. Two reasons have generally been advanced in explanation of its efficacy. First, it has been stated that the formation of a gastro-enterostomy stoma allows the gastric contents to pass into the jejunum without going through the duodenum, thereby removing the irritation of acid and food and allowing the ulcer to heal. Roentgenologists have taught, however, that in most patients unless the pylorus is completely obstructed the gastric contents leave the stomach to a large degree not through the gastro-enterostomy stoma but through the pylorus; and in spite of the fact that the ulcer continues to be exposed to the irritation of gastric contents, though perhaps for not so long a time, it usually proceeds to heal. The second explanation which has been offered is that gastro-enterostomy