83G METABOLISM. 



II. METALBOLISM IN STARVATION AND WITH INSUFFICIENT NUTRITION. 



In starvation the decomposition in the body continues uninterruptedly, 

 though with decreased intensity ; but, as it takes place at the expense of 

 the substance of the body, it can continue for a limited time only. When 

 an animal has lost a certain fraction of the mass of the body, death is the 

 result. This fraction varies with the condition of the body at the begin- 

 ning of the starvation period. Fat animals succumb when the weight of 

 the body has sunk to one-half of the original weight. Otherwise, accord- 

 ing to CHOSSAT/ animals die as a rule when the weight of the body has 

 sunk to two-fifths of the original weight. The period when death occurs 

 from starvation not only varies with the varied nutritive condition at the 

 beginning of starvation, but also with the more or less active exchange 

 of material. This is more active in small and young animals than in large 

 and older ones, but different classes of animals show an unequal activity. 

 Children succumb in starvation in 3-5 days after having lost one-fourth 

 of their body mass. Grown persons may, as observed upon Succi, 2 and 

 other professional fasters, starve for twenty days or more without lasting 

 injury; and there are reports of cases of starvation extending over a 

 period of even more than forty to fifty days. Dogs can live without food 

 from four to eight weeks, birds five to twenty days, snakes and frogs more 

 than half a year or a whole year. 



In starvation the weight of the body decreases. The loss of weight is 

 greatest in the first few days, and then decreases rather uniformly. In 

 small animals the absolute loss of weight per day is naturally less than 

 in larger animals. The relative loss of weight that is, the loss of weight 

 of the unit of the weight of the body, namely, 1 kilo is, on the contrary, 

 greater in small animals than in larger ones. The reason for this is that 

 the smaller animals have a greater surface of body in proportion to their 

 mass than larger animals, and the greater loss of heat caused thereby 

 must be replaced by a more active consumption of material. 



It follows from the decrease in the weight of the body that the absolute 

 extent of metabolism must diminish in starvation. If, on the contrary, 

 the extent of the metabolism is referred to the unit of the weight of the 

 body, namely, 1 kilo, it appears that this quantity remains almost 

 unchanged during starvation. The investigations of ZUNTZ, LEHMANN, 

 and others 3 on the professional faster CETTI showed on the third and 

 sixth days of starvation an average consumption of 4.65 cc. oxygen per 

 kilo in one minute, and on the ninth to eleventh day an average of 4.73 

 cc. The calories, as a measure of the metabolism, fell on the first to 



1 Cited from Voit in Hermann's Handbuch, 6, Thl. 1, 100. 



2 See Luciani, Das Hungern. Hamburg u. Leipzig, 1890. 



3 Berlin. Win. Wochenschr., 1887. 



