Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/233

 In some cases the subjects were at rest; in others they performed varying amounts of external muscular work on an apparatus by means of which the amount of work done was measured. In some cases they fasted, and in others they received diets generally not far from sufficient to maintain nitrogen, and usually carbon, equilibrium in the body. In these experiments the amount of energy expended by the body as heat and as external muscular work measured in terms of heat agreed on the average very closely with the amount of heat that would be produced by the oxidation of all the matter metabolized in the body. The variations for individual days, and in the average for individual experiments as well, were in some cases appreciable, amounting to as much as 6%, which is not strange in view of the uncertainties in physiological experimenting; but in the average of all the experiments the energy of the expenditure was above 99·9% of the energy of the income,—an agreement within one part in 1000. While these results do not absolutely prove the application of the law of the conservation of energy in the human body, they certainly approximate very closely to such demonstration.

—Percentage Composition of some Common Food Materials. 