SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS. 



Abstracts of Communications. 

 Sixty-seventh meeting. 



University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, April 21, 191 5. 

 President Lusk in the chair. 



85 (1017) 



The effect upon appetite of the chemical constituents of the air 

 of occupied rooms. 



By C.-E. A. Winslow and G. T. Palmer. 



[From the Laboratory of the New York State Commission on 



Ventilation.] 



It has been shown by many observers that the ordinary effects 

 of the air of an unventilated occupied room are due to its high 

 temperature rather than to its chemical composition. In the 

 experiments carried out during the past two years by the New 

 York State Commission on Ventilation, we have found that 

 neither the pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, respiration 

 nor metabolism are influenced .to a measurable degree when 

 human subjects are exposed for periods of from 4 to 7 hours to the 

 air of a room in which all the chemical products due to human 

 occupancy have been allowed to accumulate (so that the carbon 

 dioxide averages over 30 parts per 10,000) — provided the tem- 

 perature of the chamber be kept down by artificial means. 



In the course of our investigation we have however, discovered 

 a new measure of the influence of vitiated air which seems to 

 indicate that there is after all an effect produced upon the body 

 by the chemical constituents of the air of an occupied room. This 

 effect is manifested in a diminished appetite for food. 



The subjects in the first three of the five series of experiments 

 reported which are tabulated below were young men, mostly 



141 



