PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND AFFILIATED 



SOCIETIES 



THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



The 107th meeting of the Washington Academy of Sciences was held 

 in the auditorium of the New National Museum at 4.45 p.m., April 7, 

 1916, with President L. 0. Howard in the chair and a large audience 

 present. Dr. Eugene F. DuBois, Medical Director of the Russel 

 Sage institute of Pathology, New York, gave an illustrated lecture on 

 The basal food requirement of man. 



The lecture dealt chiefly with the amount of heat generated by the 

 body as affected by such factors as age, sex, size, labor, and disease. 

 It was shown that the metabolism, or sum-total of chemical changes 

 within the body, as manifested by the quantity of heat generated per 

 unit area of surface, is very low in the infant, rises to a maximum (1.5 

 that of the adult) at the age of 4 to 6 years, and then falls rapidly to 

 the metabolism of the normal adult, except at the age of puberty when 

 it rises slightly. From 20 to 30 it remains constant, after which it 

 slowly decreases. 



Metabolism is somewhat greater in man than woman, increases prac- 

 tically in direct proportion to the total skin area, varies enormously — 

 even more than 5 fold — with different degrees of exertion, and in dis- 

 ease varies widely with the nature of the malady. In typhoid, for 

 instance it is roughly 50 per cent greater than in health, demonstrat- 

 ing that the typhoid patient needs to be fed, rather than starved. 

 Equally interesting and valuable results have been gained from the 

 studies of other diseases, so that scientific human feeding may soon be 

 expected, at least in hospitals. 



The 108th meeting of the Academy was held in the auditorium of 

 the New National Museum, Friday afternoon, April 14, 1916, with Dr. 

 Carl L. Alsberg in the chair and a large audience present. Dr. 

 Graham Lusk, Professor of Physiology, Cornell Medical College, gave 

 an illustrated lecture on Nutrition and food economics. 



An extremely interesting exhibit was shown of different kinds of 

 food, — hominy, oat meal, rice, flour, potatoes, etc. — each sufficient in 

 amount for an adult, if inactive, for 24 hours. At present prices the 

 cheapest food appears to be corn meal, or hominy, costing, if one lived on 

 this alone, about 4 \ cts. per day. Tables were shown that gave the 

 quantities and the costs of many kinds of food, assuming one to live 

 on each alone. Hominy, oat meal, and rice are the cheapest, while of 



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