STANDARD BASAL METABOLISM CONSTANTS. 



243 



Andrew O'C. had never been sick until 75 years of age, and that 

 during most of his life he drank about a pint of whiskey a day, that 

 ten of the brothers and sisters of Charles H. lived to be over 70 years 

 of age, that Charles W. at 80 "was formerly very alcoholic," that the 

 health of William C. has always been good, and that the mother of 

 John B., 83 years old, died at 93, the biologist must feel that the octo- 

 genarians upon whom this series of determinations was based must 

 have been in their prime men of rare physical capacity. 



If this suggestion of the strong influence of selection in the case of 

 old men and women be valid, one might expect that a standard based 

 on a period of life in which selection is not such an important factor 

 would give values lower than the actually measured heat-productions 

 of old age. The anomalous results (in comparison with our standards) 

 of these two independent series of measurements on old people show the 

 pressing need for further investigations of metabolism at the maximum 

 age. We of course freely admit the possibility that our standards 

 may be inadequate for this period. If so, the equations must be modi- 

 fied. We hope that data on this problem may be secured at an early 

 date. Divergence of results of different observers has shown by a 

 comparison with our normal standards of illustrations A and B, how 

 great is the danger of combining the results of different series in order 

 to obtain a curve of the change of metabolism with age as has been 

 done by Du Bois. 



ILLUSTRATION C. METABOLISM OF INDIVIDUALS OF ABERRANT PHYSICAL FORM. 



We now turn to the problem of the basal metabolism of individuals 

 of highly aberrant physique. For this purpose we avail ourselves of 



TABLE 98. Comparison of the metabolism of dwarfs as studied by Aub, Du Bois, McCrudden, 

 and Lusk with normal (multiple prediction) standard for men. 



* J. P. was studied by McCrudden and Lusk, the others are due to Aub and Du Bois. 



the data for dwarfs published by Aub and Du Bois 21 and the single 

 dwarf studied by McCrudden and Lusk. 22 Table 98 gives the essential 

 data and the comparison of the theoretical and measured heat-produc- 



J1 Aub and Du Bois, Arch. Intern. Med., 1917, 19, p. 840. 



22 McCrudden and Lusk, Journ. Biol. Chern., 1912-13, 13, p. 447. 



