Salicylate Damage to the Gastric Mucosal Barrier

Abstract

EVER since Réaumur, more than two centuries ago, discovered that gastric juice digests meat, men have asked: "Why doesn't the stomach digest itself?" There are two answers to this question. One is, of course, that sometimes the stomach does digest itself, with disastrous consequences. The other is that the gastric mucosa contains a barrier that prevents the digestive juice from attacking the wall of the stomach. A standard scientific method of studying any system is to introduce a perturbation and to see what happens. Because salicylates — acetylsalicylic and salicylic acids – destroy the gastric mucosal barrier, I have used . . .