Acid secretion after gastric operations.

In the early 20th century, the commonest surgical treatment of peptic ulcer was gastroenterostomy. Crohn and Wilensky demonstrated that this operation did not achieve its aim of markedly reducing gastric acidity or of accelerating motility. These results were highly controversial, but led to Lewisohn visiting Haberer in Austria in 1922, and convincing Dr. A.A. Berg to abandon gastroenterostomy and use partial gastrectomy as the standard ulcer operation, with additional vagotomy in those patients with duodenal ulcer with high acidity. In 1929, a few patients were treated by vagotomy and gastrojejunostomy by Dr. Ralph Colp, with discouraging results. It was only in the 1940s that Mount Sinai surgeons adopted transthoracic or subdiaphragmatic vagotomy and gastroenterostomy (or later, pyloroplasty) as their standard, effective acid-lowering treatment of peptic ulcers.