NATURE OF OBESITY 395 



than in normal individuals ; the reaction, too, was of abnor- 

 mally short duration, the gas interchange sinking to normal 

 within two or three hours after taking food. They regarded 

 the conclusion justifiable that the obese individual must 

 necessarily as a result of diminished interchange be storing 

 his combustible material. Observation of Keach, Stahelin 

 and G. v. Bergmann also indicated that at least many corpu- 

 lent persons differ from, normal persons particularly in that 

 their curve of interchange does not rise as high and descends 

 less sharply to a level after intake of food, in such manner 

 that a ' ' trailing out of metabolism ' ' is suggested. However, 

 these positive statements are completely contradicted by 

 those of other authorities. Thus Eubner 35 compared with 

 the greatest care the metabolism of two brothers, both child- 

 ren and differing only a single year in age, one of whom was 

 corpulent, the other spare. Calculated according to the 

 square surface, the exchange in the two was exactly the same, 

 and there could not be considered any specific diminution of 

 metabolism. We cannot off hand, therefore, ascribe to all 

 obese persons a diminished protoplasmic disintegration 

 energy ; on the contrary we may be forced to assume, fol- 

 lowing Eubner, apparently for the majority of them just as 

 much utilization of energy in relation to their body mass as 

 would correspond to an equivalent normal individual. 36 

 A. Loewy and F. Hirschfeld also find that there are normal, 

 in fact lean, persons in whom the maintenance exchange 

 is so low that it may be of the same level at least as the 

 interchange determined in individual cases of obesity. Per- 

 haps it would be best to foresee, if the expression may be 

 permitted, that the methods of investigation now at our 

 command are not good enough to allow us to say that there 

 is a true and constant abnormality in the metabolism of all 

 obese individuals ; which does not say, however, that such 

 fault does not exist. 



85 Rubner, Beitrage zur Ernahr. im Kindesalter, Berlin, 1902. 

 88 Cf . F. Umber, 1. c., pp. 78 and 84. 



