The problem of the consumption of oxygen in so-called "idiopathic" epilepsy has interested a relatively limited number of workers. The paucity of recorded material may be due to the fact that institutionalized patients with epilepsy were the main subjects for the test; since the majority were psychotic, not all of them were suited for the study. In my own study I found it necessary to discard about fifty readings which did not represent the actual basal metabolic rate, because the patients were too psychotic to observe the necessary state of complete relaxation during the test. I made several attempts to obtain readings on these psychotic patients, but the effort had finally to be given up.
I have tabulated the observations in the two sexes separately to permit an easier comparison of possible deviations in both groups. An attempt was also made to correlate the metabolic rate with the age of