82 



PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NEW-BORN INFANT. 



TABLE 10. Respiratory quotients of infants during early hours after birth Continued. 



1 Duration of periods about 1 hour in practically all cases. 



2 The designations here used indicate only that the activity in one period is greater or less than in 



the other periods, the letter A being applied to the period of least activity in each case. 



The designations are not comparable for the different subjects. 



When we examine the individual quotients for each day, we find 

 that at times there are great fluctuations, as, for instance, in the case of 

 subject 83, in which there was an increase in the last period from 0.79 

 to 0.99. Since the infant had had no previous nourishment and was 

 without food during the whole time that it lay in the respiration 

 chamber, it is of course inconceivable that after 8^ hours of fasting 

 subsequent to birth there should have been this qualitative alteration 

 to a metabolism which would be indicative of pure carbohydrate com- 

 bustion. On several other days similar abnormal respiratory quotients 

 are found, these being indicated in the table by brackets. These 

 brackets are not used to differentiate sharpty between the correct and 

 incorrect quotients, but merely to point out the most strikingly defective 

 quotients. 



There may be two reasons for these defective quotients. In the 

 first place, they may be due to excessive carbon-dioxide excretion, 

 unaccompanied by a corresponding increase in the oxygen absorption, 

 or they may be due to a defect in the measurement of the oxygen, 

 particularly of the residual oxygen inside the chamber. If we examine 

 the values given in this table for the total carbon-dioxide production, 

 we find that at times there are very great increases. Thus, with 

 infant No. 80, there was an increase of over 100 per cent in the carbon- 

 dioxide production from the second to the third period of the observa- 

 tion, this being accompanied by an increase of 0.12 in the respiratory 



