1 8 



Scientific Proceedings (35). 



were secured through the out-patient department of the McLean 

 Lying-in Hospital. They were cared for in the New England 

 Deaconess Hospital near the laboratory and were kept on a care- 

 fully regulated diet, which, except for the day of parturition and 

 one or two days thereafter, was essentially the same throughout 

 for each case. Early in the morning before breakfast was taken, 

 the subjects were brought to the laboratory (in an ambulance when 

 necessary) and were placed in the calorimeter for periods of two 

 or three hours during which hourly determinations of the carbon 

 dioxide output, the oxygen absorption, the heat elimination and 

 the heat production were made. 



The heat production was calculated also by the Zuntz method 

 from the amount of nitrogen in the urine, the carbon in the expired 

 air and the oxygen absorbed. A very satisfactory agreement was 

 found between the two methods. 



Two of the subjects were primiparae and one was a multipara. 

 In both primiparae, the heat production of mother and child was 

 found to be slightly larger just previous to parturition than it was 

 after the temperature had returned to normal following parturition. 

 In the multipara, it was slightly higher following parturition than 

 before. The results, therefore, are in sharp contrast with results 

 obtained by one of us 1 on the dog where the heat production as 

 calculated from the excreta was very much greater following birth 

 of the young. 



The heat production of the mother alone was obtained by direct 

 determination and that of the child by difference. The three cases 

 agreed in showing a heat production per kilogram per hour for the 

 child approximately two and a half times that of the mother under 

 the same conditions. 



1 Proceedings of the American Physiological Society, 1909, xxiii, 32. 



