CONCLUSIONS 473 



study other components (constituents, properties, activities) of 

 organisms and their parts. Heat, total substance, glucose, carbon 

 dioxide, heart frequency, blood flow and others, were summarily 

 examined, chiefly in dog and man. Each had a variability and an 

 equilibration ; and for several the organisms manifested appropri- 

 ate behavior toward environments that contained them or influ- 

 enced them. The patterns of regulation were common to all 

 components. 



Thereupon the several components of one organism could be 

 compared, with respect to variability, tolerance, equilibration, 

 modifications of exchange, paths of exchange, and specificity of 

 exchange. In this study the physiologist did not appear to be 

 limited to the chemical or other nature of each component ; for, the 

 parameters used in comparisons were not expressed in physico- 

 chemical units. Rather, each parameter was a quantitative relation 

 concerning regulation; hence was a physiological characterization 

 of the organism as observed. 



Once several components had been studied, simultaneous han- 

 dlings of components by the organism could be examined. Their 

 interrelations seemed to manifest the compatibilities and prefer- 

 ences in the contents and exchanges of each. Thus, frequency of 

 heart beat is after a disturbance stabilized within 0.1 hour, heat 

 content only after 2.0 hours. But their recoveries are not indepen- 

 dent; rather the organism is constituted in such a manner that 

 every component falls into an order relative to every other. Most 

 components have some tie, known or unknown, with one another; 

 their exchanges especially are not wholly independent; and the 

 associations among them are evidenced by the interrelated incre- 

 ments and rates of recovery. 



In all the above investigation, procedures of general interest 

 were being used, their descriptive nature constituting one approach 

 to the study of general, special, and comparative physiologies. 

 Historically the elements of those methods have been widely em- 

 ployed; they alone seem to have revealed the general features of 

 what is meant by physiological regulations. Speculations about 

 all the phenomena visualized in the several components that were 

 studied, and about the general features of regulation, could lead to 

 extensions of the investigation in a variety of directions. For the 

 present, regulations seem to have become concretely real in the 

 quantitative relations by virtue of which they are here analyzed. 



