84 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NEW-BORN INFANT. 



per cent from fat. While with these infants we have not been able 

 to secure a non-protein respiratory quotient, we may safely disregard 

 this fact and assume that a quotient of 0.90 with these infants cor- 

 responds to a katabolism in which approximately two-thirds of the 

 maintenance metabolism is derived from carbohydrate. 



To obtain the average respiratory quotient for these infants on the 

 first day of life, we may best examine the values given in table 11, 

 in which all of the respiratory quotients on the first day have been 

 brought together and averaged. We find that the average respiratory 

 quotient for 74 infants on the first day of life was 0.80, a value materi- 

 ally lower than the quotient of 0.90 occasionally appearing in the first 

 few hours of life. This value of 0.80 represents a fasting value not 

 widely different from that observed during the first 24 hours with fasting 

 man, a previous publication from this laboratory showing that the aver- 

 age respiratory quotient in 14 experiments with 10 men was 0.79 on the 

 first day. 1 



Benedict, Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 77, 1907, p. 451. 



