“…Severe diarrhoea is commonly associated with metabolic acidosis, attributed to the loss in the stools of alkaline intestinal contents or ofsecretions containing proportionately less chloride and more bicarbonate than the blood plasma (Beisel, Watten, Blackwell, Benyajati, and Phillips 1963). Exceptionally, a patient with either acute (Maizels andMcArthur, 1929, 1930) or chronic diarrhoea (Lubran and McAllen, 1951;Schwartz, and Relman 1953;de Graeff and Schuurs, 1960;Aber, Sampson, Whitehead, and Brooke, 1962) is found to have a metabolic alkalosis apparently caused by the development of potassium deficiency; but the few such cases that have been studied in detail (Schwartz and Relman, 1953;de Graeff and Schuurs, 1960) showed nothing distinctive about the chemical composition of the stools.…”