326 



MEMOIRS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



alcohol, found in the air current on the first day of the series of experiments. February 6-7. is 

 considerably larger than on the 3 days following. This may be due in part to the fact that the 

 subject had taken with him into the chamber an atomizer containing an alcoholic solution of 

 eucalyptol, of which reagent, however, only a very small amount was used on the first day, and 

 none thereafter. It will also be observed that the amount of reducing material in the air current 

 during the 3 days of experiment No. 21, in which alcohol did not form a part of the diet, was 

 considerable. Attention has already been called to the fact that what is reckoned as alcohol in 

 the air current consists to a greater or less degree of reducing matter ordinarily present in the 

 respired air, whether the subject consumed alcohol or not. Later experiments indicate that this 

 amount of reducing material may be equivalent to as much as 0.4 of a gram of alcohol per day 

 (see experiments 26, 28, and 30 beyond). That the amount of alcohol and other reducing 

 material should be so large during the 3 days of experiment No. 21 is rather surprising. 

 During the 4 days of the preliminary period and the 6 days of experiments Nos. 18-20, 725 

 grams of absolute alcohol had been taken. It may be that there was a certain lag in the elimina- 

 tion of alcohol not oxidized by the body. That there could be any large amount of alcohol 

 remaining in the body seems altogether improbable, both from physiological considerations and 

 from the results of experiments which have been made concerning the amount of alcohol which 

 may be found in the tissues of the body. If there were a lag in the elimination, we do not know 

 how long it would continue. In later experiments, Nos. 22, 27, and 33, no such lag was observed. 

 The figures for reducing material in the alcohol on the 3 days of experiment No. 21 are not as 

 trustworthy as those of the previous days, owing to certain analytical irregularities. The 

 figures in column 5 of Table XLII show the total excretion of alcohol on the arbitrary 

 assumption that one-half the average amount of reducing material found in experiment No. 21 was 

 actually alcohol. While it is believed that these amounts represent more than the actual 

 elimination of alcohol, they have been used in the computations of the income and outgo of 

 carbon and energy in the following tables: 



T\ble XLII. — Alcohol ingested and excreted — Metabolism experiments Nos. 1S—20* 



'No. 21 included for comparison. 



