While very exact methods of quantitating and analyzing the intake of food and output of excrement and excretions are required for physiologic purposes in the study of metabolism, these methods are obviously impracticable for the physician. However, certain approximate and quite simple methods along the general line are practical and useful.

Probably the very simplest and most useful item is a knowledge of the weight from time to time. It should not be forgotten that differences of many pounds may be due to changes in clothing and in the contents of the pockets, that a single discharge of urine, a single drink of water, or one meal, may amount to a pound or more and that fluctuations in perspiration, accumulations in the alimentary canal, etc., may also cause marked diurnal variations. Hence significance can be attached only to rather regular and progressive changes for considerable periods. While, as is explained elsewhere, oxidation can scarcely cause a net loss of weight of more than 300 grams in a day - though larger amounts may be lost by discharge or evaporation of water, and of sugar in diabetes - it frequently happens that a pound or more of fat or of fat with protein and glycogen, may be stored by the normal body under an excessive diet.

In using the table of heights and weights, it should be remembered that the age, during adult life, should not be considered to any extent in estimating the proper weight for a given height, although there is tendency, not entirely due to unhygienic factors, such as lack of exercise and overeating, toward gradual deposit of fat up to about the 50th year, and a gradual decline of appetite and of fat in old age. A variation of ten or possibly 29 per cent, either way from the standard should not be considered pathologic although, on the whole, it is better for persons not liable to irregularities of exposure, exercise and meals, to keep at or slightly under the standard.

Daily Weight Chart. First 20 Days From Birth

Name:.......................................................................................Date of Birth........................................................190........

As commonly taken, the weight is adventitiously increased to a considerable extent. A man will ordinarily carry 1 - 2 pounds extra weight in his pockets, not including articles temporarily carried. The lightest summer clothes for a man who dresses well, not referring to outing suits for particular purposes, weigh 7 - 8 pounds, without vest and with the lightest underwear. This adventitious weight may be more than doubled in winter, not

Table Of Average Height And Weight - Dr. Heinrich Stern

Including hat, overcoat, rubbers, etc. Women's clothes vary much more in weight, and not so uniformly with the seasons, the ordinary limits being 5 and 20 pounds. Thus, if the naked weight cannot be secured, accurate estimates of weight require the tare of the clothing, and even increase and decrease, to be significant, must be reckoned from weighings with identical garments.

Under ordinary circumstances the body loses about 1000 c.c. of water a day by the skin and kidneys each, 550 by the lungs, and 50 - 200 c.c. by the faeces. Thus, generally speaking, water should be administered so as to maintain the urine at about 1000 c.c. daily, aggregating about-3000 c.c.

Weight By Years

Even in metabolism experiments, the skin loss in water, fat and nitrogen-containing epithelium - the nitrogenous matter in sweat being a mere trace except in renal or analogous visceral disease - is usually ignored. It is probable that a skin with active sebaceous glands, frequently bathed with warm water and soap, causes the loss of an appreciable amount of fat. Just how much is difficult even to estimate, but it is a significant fact that many skins are as greasy as those into which 15 - 25 grams of fat has been recently introduced by inunction and the latter method is practiced only over a small area of the skin.