Excerpt from Progressive Medicine, Vol. 4: A Quarterly Digest of Advances, Discoveries and Improvements in the Medical and Surgical Sciences; December, 1911 Atony of the Esophagus. Under this term Holzknecht and Olbert1 describe a condition for the recognition of which they assume more or less credit. Their observations were made exclusively by skiagraphy, which, in their opinion, is the only means by which the condition may be recognized. They found the condition to be a surprisingly common one both in persons presenting symptoms of digestive disturbance and those presenting no such symptoms. To properly understand the radiographic findings which characterize atony of the esophagus, we must make brief mention of the normal radio graphic picture as described by Holzknecht and oibert. When a person swallows food of soft consistency, the portions of food take first the form of a large drop as they enter the esophagus from the pharynx; as these descend into the thoracic portion of the esophagus, they become some what elongated and of more uniform diameter, assuming something of a finger-like form; just before entering the cardia the mass of food becomes somewhat shorter and thicker. The progress of a mouthful of soft food in four phases of its progress from mouth to stomach is shown in Fig. 1. The radiographic characteristics of atony of the esophagus are shown in Fig. 2; here, instead of a small compact mass of food as is normally seen, there is a long thin column seen, extending practically from the pharynx to the cardia. It must be noted that both of these descriptions refer only to the taking of soft food, not to either solid or liquid food. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.