Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology.

The history of the research on peptic ulcer disease (PUD) is characterized by a premature abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis, which subsequently had its comeback, leading to the discovery of Helicobacter pylori-the major cause of the disease. In this paper we examine the received view on this case, according to which the primary reason for the abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis in the mid-twentieth century was a large-scale study by a prominent gastroenterologist Palmer, which suggested no bacteria could be found in the human stomach. To this end, we employ the method of digital textual analysis and study the literature on the etiology of PUD published in the decade prior to Palmer's article.

Heuristic reevaluation of the bacterial hypothesis of peptic ulcer disease in the 1950s.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century the research on peptic ulcer disease (PUD) focused on two rivaling hypothesis: the "acidity" and the "bacterial" one. According to the received view, the latter was dismissed during the 1950s only to be revived with Warren's and Marshall's discovery of Helicobacter pylori in the 1980s. In this paper we investigate why the bacterial hypothesis was largely abandoned in the 1950s, and whether there were good epistemic reasons for its dismissal.