Effect of Diet on the Healing of Experimental Gastric Ulcer

Abstract

Ferguson was able to produce uniformly in rabbits gastric ulcers which persisted from 2 to 8 months or longer. He incised the anterior wall of the stomach and at the point of incision removed a piece of mucosa and then closed the stomach by a silk suture, the rabbits being kept on a diet of hay, oats and carrots. It occurred to us that this observation provided a method of studying the effect of diet on the healing of this experimental gastric ulcer. In our first series of rabbits we found that if a lesion was made in the posterior wall of the stomach in which no silk suture was present and one in the anterior wall in which a silk suture was present and the rabbits placed on the stock diet of hay, oats and carrots, that the posterior lesion healed in 30 days, but the anterior lesion did not. This showed that the silk suture was a factor in delaying healing and that in the absence of the silk, diet played no rôle in delaying healing. Anterior lesions of the Ferguson type were made in 29 rabbits. Twelve were placed on the stock diet and 17 on a diet of milk, bread and mashed boiled carrots. The rabbits were sacrificed on the 30th day. All of the 12 rabbits on the “rough diet” had ulcers at the 30th day. Only 3 of the 17 on the “soft diet” had ulcers. The results show that the silk suture per se is not sufficient to prevent the ulcer from healing and that a “rough diet” plus the silk suture factor are sufficient to produce a chronic gastric ulcer, grossly and histologically, and that a “soft diet” favors the healing of gastric lesions.