14 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NEW-BORN INFANT. 



tests were not made with burning alcohol. Although such tests are 

 cited in the reports of later investigations in this laboratory, Scherer 

 gives no description of control tests made by him. 



OBSERVATIONS BY BABAK. 



The next research on this subject published from the Prague labora- 

 tory was that of Babak, 1 which appeared in Bohemian in 1901 and in a 

 somewhat abridged form in German in 1902. Babak's investigations 

 dealt primarily with the study of the heat regulation, the Bohemian 

 paper being prefaced by an extended consideration of theoretical 

 points involved in the discussion of the chemical and physical heat 

 regulation; evidently this was the whole trend of his discussion and his 

 experimental research, his interest in the gaseous metabolism of new- 

 born infants being only secondary. 



Babdk used a respiration apparatus of the Regnault-Reiset type, 

 which was, indeed, the apparatus originally employed by Scherer but 

 later somewhat modified by the attachment of calorimetric devices 

 on the d'Arsonval principle. The control tests, which were made by 

 the burning of alcohol, are reported to give an accuracy of 2 per cent 

 within theory for the oxygen consumption and 6 per cent within theory 

 for the carbon-dioxide production. This large error in the carbon 

 dioxide is, we believe, unique with the Regnault-Reiset type of respira- 

 tion apparatus, for with all of the apparatus that we have thus far 

 investigated we have found that the determinations of the carbon 

 dioxide are usually extraordinarily exact, practically all of the errors 

 falling upon the oxygen. Since no protocols are given by Babak, 

 either in the German paper or in the Bohemian paper, further intelli- 

 gent discussion of the technique is impossible. In all 63 experiments 

 were made with 7 infants, ranging in age from 1 to 8 days. No records 

 were published for these infants of the degree of activity or of the pulse- 

 rate. We can not, therefore, compare the total metabolism as measured 

 by this type of apparatus with the results of modern researches. 



As the alcohol control tests of Babdk's calorimeter never showed an 

 extraordinarily high degree of accuracy, and as Babdk's problem was 

 simply to determine the temperature regulation of the new-born 

 infant, it is not surprising that in the German article he gives but 

 a few words to the discussion of the respiratory quotient, only making 

 the statement that, like Scherer, he found the respiratory quotient 



, Rozp. C. Akad. Cisafe Frantiska Josefa, Tfida II, Rodnik X, Cislo I, 1901, and Archiv 

 f. d. ges. Physiol., 1902, 89, p. 154. The reference to the German publication of Babdk's researches 

 was inadvertently omitted from our two previous communications. (See Benedict and Talbot, 

 Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 201, 1914, and Am. Journ. Diseases of Children, 1914, 8, p. 1.) 

 At the time the literature was being assembled we were awaiting a complete translation of the 

 original Bohemian article, and as this could not be finished prior to publication it was not inserted. 

 The absence of the German reference was clearly an omission. At this point we would like to 

 state that the Bohemian article has been translated by Miss B. Haderbolets, the Bohemian trans- 

 lator of the Nutrition Laboratory, and a copy is on file in the laboratory. 



