On Balneotherapy for Digestive Organ Diseases

Abstract

In this clinic the incidence of improvement of the patients with gastroduodenal ulcer and with bile duct diseases has been 80%. The former took the water from Yunohira spring at Oita, weak salty water, and the latter from Matogahama spring at Beppu, saline salt and bicarbonate containing water.
Drinking was begun at first with 500ml p. die, gradually increasing the amount till 1000ml p. die, and then this was continued. Two to three weeks' period was spent for the treatment.
This period was taken up from the results obtained on the liver function, the fluctuation of autonomous nerve tension, the water content of the blood, and on the extracellular fluid volume, and moreover effectiveness was observed mostly within this period.
As for action-mechanism of Yunohira spring water, it has been explained from normalizing effects upon gastric acidity which were reported by many students at this institute and from pace-making effects upon gastrointestinal motility observed by us.
Kizaki observed healing effects of the water upon ulcer by way of the changes in adrenocortical function. Takahashi sustained the effectiveness of the water from the fluctuation of uropepsin. Watanabe explained the effectiveness from depressive effects upon Arthus phenomenon.
Hirata observed that Yunohira's water had correcting effects upon the unbalanced state of various ferment, seen in the patients with gastrointestinal diseases.
As for liver function promoting effect of Matogahama's water, it was confirmed in respects of dye-secretion, bile secretion, and other seroreactions. But it has not yet been confirmed which component of the water had the effectiveness.
By investigating the correlation between analytical components of the thermal waters in the western Japan districts and the changes of digestive function after drinking them that had been studied by us, it was found that some waters had quite different effects even when their analytical tables were similar. The others had almost similar effects though their chemical components were different. Therefore the decision of indication of a thermal water cannot be made from mere analytical table, until elementary and clinical study on the water is done.
Here in order to study the action of each component analytically, it was tried to see the changes of the action of the water by adding a certain substance to the water, the action of which had already been known, and also to observe the action of single salt. The followings are a part of the results.
Matogahama spring water had promoting effects upon bile secretion and this was confirmed by the observation of bile fistula of the rabbits, and it was found that the quantity of bile, bile dye and cholesterol were increased.
The same observation was done with salts separately prepared from Matogahama spring water, but these single salts had not such actions as the water itself.
The water stored for two to three weeks lost its effectiveness compared with freshly taken water.
Thus it is thought that principal active part of the water might be gas element or trace element, but the organic changes of the component or of the water itself, and/or of the state of the solute should be taken into consideration in the explanation of the action of the water.