DISCUSSION OF RESULTS. 



163 



time after feeding. It is impossible, therefore, to explain these great 

 discrepancies as being due to muscular activity, nor can they in any 

 way be accounted for by the ingestion of food, since our experiments 

 have shown that the food taken by these infants while under observa- 

 tion had no material influence upon the metabolism. Finally, it should 

 be noted that, in general, the observations were made at substantially 

 the same time relations to the food ingestion. 



Fig. 65. Chart showing actual body-weight of infanta and heat-production per square meter of 

 body-surface (Howland curve) per 24 hours. 



EFFECT ON METABOLISM OF POSSIBLE DISTURBANCE IN RELATIONSHIP 

 BETWEEN BODY-SURFACE AND BODY-WEIGHT. 



It has frequently been the custom when discrepancies in the heat- 

 production per square meter of body-surface are found with infants, 

 and particularly with atrophic infants, to ascribe the variation to a 

 disturbance of the relationship between body-surface and the body- 

 weight from which it is computed. It is essential, therefore, at this 

 point to discuss this possibility more in detail. 



The argument frequently raised is that disturbances in the relation- 

 ship between body-weight and body-surface with under-weight infants 

 precludes the use of any of the formulas now regularly used for the 

 computing of body-surface, in that they give too small a value of body- 

 surface for such infants. At the outset we wish to oppose this general 

 thesis on the ground that in the most extensive and remarkably accu- 

 rate series of measurements on infants with which we are familiar, 

 namely, those of Lissauer, it is especially emphasized that 10 out of 12 



