To the Editor.—I am writing to comment about the article in the Archives entitled "Pancreatectomy and Liver Damage: Effects on Humoral Gastric Secretion in Dogs" by Vadhanasindhu and Dragstedt (105:454, 1972).
In order for anyone to ascertain whether pancreatic exocrine replacement would influence the gastric secretion in these experiments, it is absolutely mandatory that one be certain of the fact that the pancreatic replacement therapy is effective. In some previous work,1 we clearly demonstrated that if one incubated pancreatic enzymes with the food prior to administering this mixture to the dog we were in fact able to reverse completely the hypersecretion of acid gastric juice induced by ligation of the pancreatic ducts. The reason for this is that pancreatic lipase is notoriously susceptible to destruction by means of an acid pH. In view of the fact that these animals hypersecrete acid gastric juice, there is small wonder that