Pressure recordings from the esophagus and its sphincters, while originally of primarily physiological interest, are becoming useful in clinical medicine to evaluate motor disorders of this portion of the alimentary tract. After elucidation of the resting pressures and those following the act of deglutition in healthy subjects, investigations were extended in several laboratories (particularly those of Code (1, 2), Ingelfinger (3), Hightower (4), and Texter, Smith, Moeller, and Barbarka (5)), to study the patterns occurring in pathological conditions. Manometric esophageal studies have, in some centers, proven so valuable in the diagnosis of disturbances of the esophagus that they have become