The studies on the effect of an intravenous infusion of ethanol on the exocrine pancreatic secretion of the rat are contradictory: weak ethanol quantities (less than 2 g/kg) being inefficient, inhibiting or stimulating pancreatic secretion according to different authors. The purpose of this work was to explain these discrepancies. Our results show that: 1) If the secretion of the rats is greater than or equal to 200 microliters/30 min (good general conditions) ethanol inhibits the protein secretion stimulated by either exogenous secretion or endogenous release of CCK (interruption of the flow of pancreatic juice into the duodenum) but does not modify non stimulated secretion (pancreatic juice reintroduced into the duodenum). 2) The differences observed in the literature are probably due to the use of rats in bad general conditions. It is recommended to use only rats, the secretion of which is greater than or equal to 200 microliter