A new stomach clamp.

An efficient stomach clamp is one which exerts an even and sufficient pressure across the whole width of the stomach without causing undue trauma at any one point. Very few stomach clamps at present obtainable fulfil these conditions satisfactorily because they ate mainly constructed on the ' bow handle ' principle, or are of the crushing type. All clamps of this type necessarily exert most pressure at the end of the blade nearest to the hinge and less pressure in proportion to the distance from the hinge until at the far extremity of the blades the clamp becomes inefficient. Various devices have been introduced in the attempt to overcome this difficulty, but they have been, and must be, largely unsuccessful as long as the ' bow handle' principle is adopted.