Stimulates acid secretion, discovery

Rapid progress in gastroenterological research was initiated by the discovery by William Front (Guy s and St. Thomas hospitals London), in 1823, of the presence of inorganic, hydrochloric acid in the stomach and by Ivan P. Pavlov (Saint-Petersburg) in 1890, of neuro-reflex stimulation of secretion of this acid that was awarded Nobel Prize in 1904. Then, James W. Black (Figure 1.34), at that time pharmacologist at Smith Kline and French, who followed L. Popielski s concept of histamine involvement in the stimulation of this secretion, was awarded second Nobel... 

Immediately after Popielski s discovery became known, Ernst Rothlin of Zurich began a series of experiments comparing the effects of subcutaneous injections of histamine with the response of a dog s Pavlov pouch to a meal. In a few instances, as for example on 3 April 1920, Rothlin found that the concentration of pepsin in juice, as measured by the Mett method, was as high in two samples obtained after histamine stimulation as in three samples obtained after the dog had eaten. Nevertheless, Rothlin concluded that histamine is a less potent stimulus of pepsin than of acid secretion. ... 

The discovery and increasing understanding of the importance of the H, K -ATPase in the late 1970s revolutionized our knowledge of the physiology of gastric acid secretion [25]. It is well accepted that the activation of H, K -ATPase is the final step in the stimulation of acid secretion and the specific PPIs, the substituted benzimidazoles, completely inhibit gastric acid secretion stimulated by cAMP and histamine [2]. 

Discovery of the HCOf -stimulated ATPase revived interest in the possibility that carbonic anhydrase participates directly in secretion of acid. In 1970 Shirley Cross, working for Smith, Kline and French in England, applied the latest version of the cobalt sulfide histochemical method for locating carbonic anhydrase in the rat stomach. She floated frozen sections of gastric mucosa on a solution of cobalt sulfate and sodium bicarbonate. As carbon dioxide evolved from the solution over... 

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