HOW TO GET ALONG WITH YOUR STOMACH

Hats off to Nancy Nugent for tackling an uncompelling subject (save for students and sufferers) with such felicity and intelligence that she makes your soft underbelly a thing of surpassing interest. Chapter by chapter she follows the route of ingestion through digestion and excretion, lucidly describing normal events, major complaints, symptoms, and treatments. Some ills are exotic--conditions of ""achalasia"" (when food sticks in the esophagus), dysphagia (difficulty in swallowing)--and some are all too familiar: gastritis, peptic ulcer, colitis, ""turistas,"" motion sickness. She is especially to be congratulated for simple definitions (how many people can accurately define ""ulcer""?), for maintaining a seasoned objectivity about the latest theories (such as genetic origins for ulcerative colitis) and for a neat intermeshing of psychogenic factors with organic causes or predispositions. Among interesting, unexplained phenomena: why women get morning sickness, why ulcers are almost unheard of in pregnancy, why some people are super stress-resistant. Among favorite new words: borborygmus--a lovely onomatopoeic description of stomach rumbling. Highly satisfactory reading that should bring relief to sufferers and solid information to the general reader.