The Feeding of Gastric Tissue in the Treatment of Pernicious Anemia

Castle and Locke 1 fed muscle meat to normal persons, recovered the meat by causing vomiting, and refed it to patients who had pernicious anemia, thus causing a response of reticulated erythrocytes, an increase in the number of erythrocytes, and clinical improvement similar to that found when liver or its extract was used. This work led Sturgis and Isaacs, 2 in collaboration with Sharp, 3 to try the effect of feeding desiccated gastric tissue to patients who had pernicious anemia, with results similar to those obtained with liver or its extract. Likewise, Castle and Locke's work led me to feed raw gastric tissue to patients who had the disease, with results which already have been reported in six cases, 4 and which were similar to those obtained with liver and liver extract. Another fact which suggested the use of gastric tissue was that I 5 had found that in approximately