Carnegie Institution of Washington publication Volume 279 - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 Excerpt: ...from a comparison of the relative surface areas of the animals. Since Rubner and Richet presented evidence to show that the heat production of living animals was proportional to the body surface, this has been a much used unit of reference." In other current (1915) literature we find such statements as the following:25 "'Rubner's law,' to quote from Lusk, is that 'the metabolism is proportional to the superficial area of an animal. In other words, the metabolism varies as the amount of heat loss at the surface, and its variance in accordance with this law is necessary for the maintenance of a constant temperature.'" In a popular text-book on nutrition 26 we also find: "Since the body loses heat in proportion to the extension of its surface it is not strange that this is the determining factor for the metabolism." Du Bois, in his Harvey lecture 27 of November 27, 1915, said: "Rubner demonstrated many years ago that the metabolism is proportional to the surface-area of the body and that for each square meter of skin large men, small men, dogs, horses, and mice have about the same heat production. Just why this should be we do not know. It reminds us at once of Newton's law that the cooling of bodies is proportional to their surface-area, but the metabolism does not follow this law when the external temperature is raised or lowered." 3 Armsby, The Principles of Animal Nutrition, New York, 1906, 2d ed., p. 366. Professor Armsby, in a recent personal communication states that this phraseology does not exactly express his belief: "The true state of the case is, as I conceive it, that the body does not produce heat to any considerable extent to keep itself warm but is kept warm because it produces heat. In other words, heat ...