India, Sept. 6 -- In his book A Treatise on the Stomach and Its Trials (c. 1865), the British pharmacist James Crossley Eno wrote that "one of the most uncomfortable beings on earth is a Dyspeptic. To most other invalids there is some hope of a change. (This) will neither kill the patient nor depart from him. it has been more hopeless than a sentence of imprisonment for life."

Decades before Eno's book, by the early 19th century, in fact, Britain and America were both nations of dyspeptics.

Amid the industrial-era boom in urban populations and the lifestyle changes that followed, this disease, which had been something of a status symbol as an indication of a rich and debaucherous diet, became rampant.

This was a time of immense polluti...