326 E. T. Bell, 



voluntary muscle fibers there were never any refractive droplets to be 

 seen, and that preparations fixed in Flemming's fluid never contained 

 any blackened granules. His obserA/ations were offered mainly to refute 

 the claim made by a number of earlier writers that a fatty degeneration 

 of muscle occurs during starvation. 



Miescher [1897] described a fatty degeneration of certain muscles 

 of the Basel salmon during its hunger period which lasts six to twelve 

 months. 



A number of earlier observers^) have stated that a fatty degeneration 

 of muscle occurs during starvation. 



W.alhaum [1899] states that in children there is no particular 

 relation between the nutritive condition and the amount of fat in the 

 muscle fibers. 



My own observations are based on experiments with a large 

 number of rats, and several cats. The animals were kept without food 

 for varying lengths of time. Water was not withheld. The fatness 

 of the animal at the beginning of the experiment was always estimated, 

 since a fat animal will live longer than a thin one. The percentage loss 

 of body weight is a good index of the amount of connctive tissue fat 

 and intramuscular fat when the initial condition of the animal is known. 

 A rat lives without food only three or four days. The loss of body weight 

 in complete starvation is usually 25 to 30 per cent. Of course thin ani- 

 mals die before losing so much. If a little food be given each day a loss 

 of over 40 per cent may sometimes be obtained. The loss of weight in 

 the cat is very much slower than in the rat ■ — these animals often endure 

 starvation three weeks or longer. In every animal there is a gradual 

 disappearance of the liposomes during inanition. As the animal loses 

 weight the liposomes gradually become smaller and less refractive; 

 and they also stain with decreasing intensity. The muscle fibers of a 

 well-nourished cat are usually full of coarse deeply-staining droplets 

 such as is shown in fig. 1, from the frog. After the animal has lost about 

 20 per cent of the body weight, the liposomes are not nearly so refrac- 

 tive and stain much less intensely with Herxheimer's solution (fig. 5). 



*) See papers of Statkewitch and Knoll. 



