GASTRIC ACIDITY

Physiology is indebted to medicine for the establishment of norms for a large variety of bodily functions. Deviations from the normal can then be measured so as to afford signs of possible pathologic conditions that may be responsible for the aberrations. The range of normal variation for such manifestations as heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rhythm and blood pressure under established circumstances forms the basis for many clinical judgments. In recent years data secured by chemical rather than purely physical methods of measurement have come into increasing vogue. The estimates of basal metabolic rates and of the composition of the blood belong in this category. Although gastric analysis is by no means a recent procedure and the literature on the subject is enormous, there are few well founded generalizations as to the range of normal variation in gastric acid from youth to old age. In explanation of the lack of