The effect, therefore, even after a short period of sham feeding, stretches over a length of time. Naturally the same holds good for the taking of food in the normal way. One must, however, bear in mind that in sham feeding, with all the force and reality of a hunger sensation not satisfied, the eager desire for food, the effective agency, becomes more and more accentuated, and therefore the secretory influence is prolonged and more powerful. In normal feeding, however, the quelling of the longing, the feeling of satisfaction which, as is well known, sets in long before the termination of the digestive period from the mere filling and distension of the stomach, must diminish the desire for food, and, consequently, bring the secretory effect to an end. It is, therefore, improbable that the whole secretory process in the stomach, which, in the case of certain kinds and quantities of food, lasts from ten to twelve hours, is dependent on the factors which we have up to the present investigated. This is all the more obvious since a sham feeding of five minutes, even under the most favourable circumstances, does not call forth a secretion for longer than three to four hours. We must, therefore, seek for other exciting agencies of the innervation apparatus of the gastric glands. Why and wherefore is the secretion instituted by psychic influence maintained? What would first occur to all your minds is naturally the immediate influence which the food exerts upon the walls of the stomach. And this is true, but it does not happen in the simple, direct fashion current in the minds of many physiologists and physicians. When I said that bread or boiled white of egg, introduced directly into the stomach, may not for hours produce a trace of secretion, probably many of my hearers may have asked themselves with natural astonishment, “How, then, is the effect of the forced feeding of phthisical and insane patients, and the artificial feeding of those with gastric fistulæ (performed on account of stricture of the œsophagus) to be explained?” I will introduce my answer by a very unexpected pronouncement relative to the assertion that mechanical stimulation of the stomach wall by food constitutes a reliable and effective means of calling forth the secretory work of the glands. This assertion, which is so categorically set forth in many text-books of physiology, and which consequently has gained hold of the mind of the physician, is nothing else than a sad misconception degenerated into a stubborn prejudice. My own statement, repeated in many published articles, and at the meetings of various medical societies, that this dictum is only a picture of the imagination, has met, for the most part, either with an unbelieving shake of the head or else with a direct avowal that “it cannot be so.” I regret exceedingly that these steadfast unbelievers are not here, so that we might together bring the matter before the