METABOLISM AS AFFECTED BY GROWTH. 159 



RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SURFACE AREA OF THE BODY AND METABOLISM. 



For decades the surface area of the body has by many physiologists 

 been considered to have an intimate (in fact, a determining) relation- 

 ship with the heat production. An extensive critique 1 of the body- 

 surface law makes it unnecessary here to do more than to summarize 

 in the following manner : 



Height and weight have independent influences upon metabolism; 

 body-surface, with its rather close relationship to weight, likewise 

 has an apparent relationship to metabolism. Since body-surface 

 represents more nearly a general morphological law of growth than 

 body-weight does, the relationships between accurately measured 

 body-surface and metabolism are frequently much closer than between 

 body-weight and metabolism. Biometric analysis has shown, how- 

 ever, that certainly with the older methods of estimating body-surface, 

 namely, the Meeh formula with its several constants, 2 body-weight 

 and body-surface are equally closely correlated with heat production. 

 When more exact methods for estimating body-area are used, par- 

 ticularly the linear formula and the resultant height-weight chart of 

 Du Bois, 3 the correlation between area and metabolism is slightly 

 better than that between weight and metabolism, particularly if the 

 method employing regression equations suggested by Harris and 

 Benedict 4 be employed. The earlier estimates of body-surface area 

 (from the Meeh formula) are so erroneous and the factors have such 

 large coefficients of variation that at best they are only rough approx- 

 imates, and the modern physiologist may well disregard completely 

 all consideration of body-surface as calculated from the Meeh formula. 



The freeing of physiology from the cumbersome, wholly erroneous 

 method of Meeh is due to the admirable work of D. and E. F. Du Bois, R 

 who, by an extensive series of painstaking measurements of surface 

 and casts from the surface of the body, have established a method of 

 estimating the surface area of the body with a very considerable degree 

 of accuracy. This method agrees perfectly with an entirely different 

 method of measurement based upon a photographic procedure. 6 It 

 should be stated, however, that the photographic method could not 

 have been developed without the work of the Du Boises. As a result 

 of the critique of the body-surface law presented by Harris and Bene- 

 dict, we believe that the accurate measurements of body-surface made 

 possible by Du Bois may legitimately be used in a manner heretofore 

 never practicable in metabolism experiments, provided that they are 

 considered as physical measurements and with no erroneous concep- 



1 Harris and Benedict, Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 279, 1919, p. 129. 



2 Meeh, Zeitschr. f. Biol., 1879, 15, p. 425. 



Du Bois and Du Bois, Arch. Intern. Med., 1916, 17, p. 863. 



* Harris and Benedict, Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 279, 1919, p. 188. 



6 Du Bois and Du Bois, loc. cit. 



Benedict, Am. Journ. Physiol., 1916, 41, p. 275. 



