From time to time the need has arisen in our hospital work of having figures for the nitrogen partition in the urine of normal children, as a basis for comparison with figures obtained from patients with pathologic conditions. While there is no reason to presuppose that such figures would vary grossly from those for the nitrogen partition in the adult, in many respects children form a distinct group of individuals in so far as their metabolism is concerned. As evidence of this we might cite the increased total energy requirement of the infant and young child, the increased nitrogen retention coincident with growth and development, and the variations in the metabolism of some of the individual nitrogenous substances, as creatinin.
Previous studies of the nitrogen metabolism in children have been concerned with other phases, as for example the utilization of nitrogen and studies on the nitrogen requirements carried out on