In the hands of American investigators, clinical calorimetry has yielded notable contributions. The Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, under the direction of F. G. Benedict at Boston, and the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology, under the guidance of Graham Lusk, have served as training stations. These endowed laboratories not only have enriched science with fundamental facts, but also have served as centers from which have gone young workers competent to appreciate what human calorimetry really means and to spread an interest in what it can contribute to medical progress.
The basal metabolism of normal man has been well established by the large number of carefully conducted measurements made in this country. It is not proportional to the body weight of the individual, but rather to the superficial area, as Rubner enunciated long ago. The universality of this conception is shown by the outcome of a large number of determinations