Finally, it may be of some use to relate the following here. There are often cases of sudden and unaccountable digestive disturbances. From the standpoint of modern physiology they might be explained by an activity of the secreto-inhibitory nervous system, which from some cause or other has been excessively and abnormally stimulated. In any case this system is now a factor of which the physician has to take due account. SWALLOWING AND MOVEMENTS OF THE STOMACH AND INTESTINES BY W. B. CANNON, M.D. _Of the Physiological Laboratory of the Harvard Medical School Boston, Mass., U. S. A._ [NOTE.--In the beginning of 1896 Dr. Professor Henry Pickering Bowditch, one of our Board of Scientific Assessors in the Nutrition Case suggested the use of the Röntgen ray as a means of learning more than was then known about the mechanism of swallowing. There was much difference of opinion among research physiologists about this important function, and the question was far from settled. Magendie published a theory of deglutition, in Paris, in 1836, which was practically accepted until 1876, when Dr. Professor Angelo Mosso, of the University of Turin, Turin, Italy, established the theory of sole peristaltic assistance in swallowing. Again in 1880 Dr. Professor Kronecker, of Berne, Switzerland, in connection with Dr. Falk, and later in connection with Dr. Meltzer, of New York, produced evidence to prove a more complicated process in deglutition than that of peristalsis alone. But even Kronecker and Meltzer found, as they went on, evidence to modify their earlier beliefs, and hence the subject was not cleared up to a point of general agreement. The suggestion made by Dr. Bowditch was taken up in the Harvard Physiological Laboratory and formed the beginning of a series of studies of the mechanical factors in digestion. The reports of these studies, presented by Dr. W. B. Cannon and collaborators, in the _American Journal of Physiology_, in the volumes of 1898 and 1903, are so understandable, even to the layman ignorant of physiological nomenclature, that we are prompted to give them, almost entire, leaving out only the technical description of the methods employed, which are only interesting to research students who have access to the _Journal_. It will be noted that three of the professors of physiology mentioned in connection with this preliminary study of the nutrition problem--Bowditch, Mosso, and Kronecker--are members of our presently organised Board.—HORACE FLETCHER.] THE MOVEMENTS OF THE FOOD IN THE ŒSOPHAGUS BY W. B. CANNON AND A. MOSER _From the Laboratory of Physiology in the Harvard Medical School_ Extracts from _American Journal of Physiology_, 1898