CAN FATS BE UTILIZED PARENTERALLY?

There are periods of emergency in the lives of many patients when the problem of nutrition by the conventional methods may become seemingly insuperable. The oral intake of food is often laborious for persons who are ill to the extent of physical exhaustion; sometimes even when strength is not lacking for the first processes of food ingestion there may be mechanical, pathologic or surgical complications that actually interfere with the swallowing of sufficient sources of nutriment; and, again, the condition of the alimentary tract or its physiologic lethargy and digestive incompetence may defeat every effort at feeding by mouth. Thus, many an occasion arises when some different mode of nutrition would be welcomed. In former years, consoling hopes were placed in the possibilities of rectal alimentation; but they have for the most part been shattered by the experience of many attempts at that method of feeding as well as by