INSENSIBLE LOSS OF WEIGHT IN INFANCY: FINDINGS FOR FORTY-SIX INFANTS UNDER BASAL CONDITIONS

The work of Benedict and Root,¹ Newburgh² and Levine³ demonstrated that under certain conditions the human organism dissipates through the insensible loss of body weight close to 25 per cent of the total heat produced in the body in twenty-four hours. This relation has been attested by simultaneous calorimetric measurements for adults⁴ and for infants.⁵

In a study of infants, Levine³ showed the constancy of insensible loss for short periods in the same subject in repeated observations under conditions suitable for measurements of the basal metabolism. In view of these observations and of those showing the correlation between direct calorimetric and balance experiments, it seems that data established by the balance method may in time serve as standards for the measure of basal metabolism in infancy. That technical difficulties incident to determination of the basal metabolism by direct or by indirect calorimetry are great