Effect of partial starvation followed by a return to normal diet, on the growth of the body and central nervous system of albino rats / by Shinkishi Hatai.

  • Hatai, Shinkishi.
Date:
1907
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Effect of partial starvation followed by a return to normal diet, on the growth of the body and central nervous system of albino rats / by Shinkishi Hatai. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    3/14 (page 309)
    EFFECT OF PARTI AI Reprinted from th Vol. XVIII mean Journal.of Physiology. RIL I, I907. — I$0'. III. FOLLOWED BY A RETURN TO NORMAL DIET, ON THE GROWTH OF THE BODY AND CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM OF ALBINO RATS. IN my previous research (:04) on the effect of partial starvation on the brain of the albino rat, it was shown that in the experi- mented rats, fed with starch, beef fat, and water for twenty-one days (younger group, rats thirty to forty days old; older group, rats one hundred and fifty to two hundred days old), not only the growth of the brain was stopped, but brain substance was lost, the actual loss from the weight before starvation being, on the average, 4.67 per cent. In such experimented animals, also, the percentage of water in the brain was diminished (79.08 per cent control, and 78.84 per cent experimented) and of the ether-alcohol extracts increased (46.69 per cent control, and 47.61 per cent experimented — Hatai, :04). As the absolute weight of the brain in the starved group was diminished, and as the relative amount of the extracts was increased, the writer inferred that the protein substances had been most af- fected. The total loss in the body weight in the experimented rats at the end of twenty-one days was 29.7 per cent. Having established the fact that the brain is definitely modified as the result of partial starvation for twenty-one days, the next ques- tion was: Can the nervous system thus affected recover when the animal is returned to a normal diet? The present research was undertaken in order to answer this question. Altogether thirty-two rats, representing seven litters, were used. One half of each litter was subjected to partial starvation, and the other half used for control. The rats were so grouped that at the beginning of the observation tbe average body weight in the control group balanced that in the experimented. As soon as the young By SHINKISHI HATAI. [From the IVistar Institute o Anatomy and Biology, Philadelphia.]