88 



PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NEW-BORN INFANT. 



Some of the infants obtained a certain amount of colostrum prior 

 to the measurement of the metabolism; the}- were therefore not in 

 all cases in the post-absorptive condition when the metabolism was 

 measured. Most of the infants, however, were in the post-absorptive 

 condition during the observations and the average value obtained for 

 the respiratory quotient, i. e., 0.80, may very properly be compared 

 with the average respiratory quotient of 0.79 which was previously cited 

 for 10 men on the first day of their fast. This comparison of itself 

 would therefore lead one to conclude that there was not an excessive 

 deposit of glycogen in the bodies of new-born children, for according to 

 the table of Zuntz and Schumburg, a respiratory quotient of 0.79 corre- 

 sponds to a metabolism in which approximately one-third of the energy 

 comes from carbohydrate and two-thirds from fat. 



Age "m Hours 

 FIG. 1. Respiratory quotients of infants found at various times during the first 24 hours. 



The trend of the respiratory quotient during the first 24 hours after 

 birth may perhaps best be shown graphically. We have therefore 

 plotted from table 10 all of the individual respiratory quotients obtained 

 during the first day, with the exception of the bracketed values, and 

 have supplemented these with the average values from table 1 1 for the 

 infants whose respiratory exchange was not studied in short periods in 

 the first 24 hours. The values on this chart (see fig. 1) show that 

 during the first 24 hours of life there was a slight, though definitely 

 observable, decrease in the respiratory quotient as time progressed. 

 Although this was not sufficiently characteristic to justify its represen- 

 tation by a curve, when we compare the quotients above and below 

 0.80, we find that up to the eighth hour the greater number lie above 

 0.80, while subsequent to the tenth hour the larger proportion lie below 

 this value. 



