ON STARVATION AND OBESITY, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ACIDOSIS

Assuming that excreted ('acetone bodies" are chiefly derived from incomplet,ely oxidized fat, and assuming that some persons show a pronounced t'endency to store up fat and become %tout," while others living under substantially identical conditions reveal no such tendency we may ask: Which, if either, of these two classes of individuals can better withstand starvation without excreting the above mentioned products of incomplete fat oxidation?Most physiologists or experts in metabolism work, if required to formulate an answer to the above, not altogether hypothetical question, would probably support the view that since fat persons tend to store fat more readily than lean ones, they probably tend to utilize it less readily, and that they therefore should be more subject to acidosis when compcllcd to live on their own tissue materials.Although much has been written on acidosis and still more on the metabolism of fast'ing there is as yet hardly any experimental work available on t'he basis of which any positive answer can be given to the question raised.Indeed it is only within t.he last few years (since the introduction of Shaffer's method for determining fi-oxybutyric acid) t'hat any satisfactory experimental mat,erial on this point could have been .acquired.Brugsch'sl investigation on the professional faster, Succi, is occasionally quoted as evidence showing that.the acidosis in fasting is determined by the available fat deposits.Brugsch merely showed that the faster, Succi, who was not very emaciated at the end of his thirty day fast, continued to eliminate acetone bodies to the end of the 1 T. Brugsch: