THE ABSENCE OF INHIBITION AHEAD OF PERISTALTIC RUSHES

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Abstract
By measuring the diameter of the bowel in successive pictures of a cinema film exposed during the progress of peristaltic rushes in rabbits opened under a bath of salt solution, it is shown that what occasionally looks like descending inhibition is really distention, due to the advancing column of intestinal contents. Balls of feces pass down the colon in spite of the fact that there is a powerful contraction below as well as above the distended region. The "law of the intestine" can be demonstrated so rarely that students should no longer be taught that it is the cause of normal peristalsis. It is not denied that descending inhibitions can occur under certain conditions, but these conditions are so narrowly circumscribed that the importance of the phenomenon can hardly be as great as Bayliss and Starling assumed it to be.

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