30 VITALITY AND EFFICIENCY WITH RESTRICTED DIET. 



Mayer. Miiller concludes that the absence of an increase in oxygen 

 consumption argues against a storage of active protoplasmic tissue and 

 bears out the contention of von Noorden that the nitrogenous sub- 

 stance added to the body did not have the same biological properties 

 as the original protoplasm. 



With the second subject, who was much emaciated, with a height 

 of 175 cm. and a body-weight of 46 kg., a storage of 198 grams of 

 nitrogen was found 23 days after an operation for gastroenteritis. The 

 increase in the oxygen consumption after the operation was very pro- 

 nounced, rising from 180 to 231 c.c. The body-weight increased 5.5 

 kg. Since this increase in oxygen consumption took place a rela- 

 tively few days after the operation and before there was a great storage 

 of nitrogen in the body or appreciable increase in body-weight, the 

 author argues that this was not caused by an addition of active proto- 

 plasmic tissue. He assumes that the increase in the oxygen consump- 

 tion may be due to two possibilities : one, that during the hunger period 

 the body was forced to limit its energy exchange and that with renewed 

 feeding the energy thus s ved was expended ; the other, that the transi- 

 tion from chronic undernutrition to normal conditions, especially to 

 protein plethora, might lead to a temporary condition of stimulus to the 

 cells and a transitory increase in metabolism. The first experiment of 

 Muller is extremely difficult to understand. To secure so large a stor- 

 age of nitrogen in the body with an apparently normal individual with- 

 out altering the basal metabolism in the slightest is a striking observa- 

 tion. It is to be regretted that this experiment could not have been 

 repeated under uniform conditions and thorough control. 



Zuntz and Schirokich, 1912. — A series of experiments made by Zuntz 

 and Schirokich^ with Horace Fletcher, after a diet of potatoes and 

 butter, has already been discussed in connection with experiments on 

 this subject made at Wesleyan University and the Nutrition Labora- 

 tory. (See pages 7 to 10.) 



Zuntz, 191S. — Zuntz,2 in studying an animal that was underfed for a 

 period of 13 months, found that the heat production per square meter 

 of body-surface per 24 hours as computed on the Meeh formula (a 

 method of computation that Zuntz himself considers somewhat doubt- 

 ful) showed a faUing off in metabolism from 931 calories when the dog 

 weighed 10 kg. to 631 calories when the dog weighed one-half this 

 amount. In spite of this fact, and in all probability because later when 

 the body-weight had been reduced to 4.1 kg., the heat production per 

 square meter of body-surface rose to 921 calories, Zuntz concludes that 

 the theory of an adjustment of metabolism to an insufficient intake is 

 not here substantiated. On the contrary, the opposite was demon- 

 strated in the last few weeks of life, when there was a great rise in the 

 metabolism. 



1 Zuntz and Schirokich, Separate from Med. Klinik, 1912, No. 32, 5 pp. 

 ^ Zuntz, Biochem. Zeitschr., 1913, 55, p. 341. 



