Most of the old studies on the effect of environmental temperatures on the basal metabolism have been made in the nude or lightly clothed conditions of experimetal subjects. Therefore this experiment was carried out in addition of varying the clothing conditions as a practical problem. The experiments were made at every season over a year. This gaper qives the data in summer 1953.
Method: The xperiment was conducted by Douglas-Bag method on a healthy man aged 40 years at environmental temperatures 40°C, 10°C, 0°C and-8°C by using the temerature conditioning room. the subject was kept at lightly clothed and warmly clothed conditions as shown in table 1. The measurement of the heat production at the regulated temperature was conducted continuously for two hours and after the end of experiment the recovery process was measured inthe comfort zone for 30 minutes. Skin temperatures were measured in 5 parts of the body as shown in table 3.
Results: As seen in table 2, the heat production for two hours at 40°C showed the rise of about 7% over the basal metabolism.
In lightly clothed conditions, the heat production at 10°C increased by 17% above the basal metabolism and at 0°C (there was an air current of 1.4m/sec. only in this case) and -8°C by 50%.
In warmly clothed condilions, at environmental temperatures 10°C, 0°C and -8°C, in any cases the rise of metabolism were not recognized when the influence of restlessness were excepted.
This results showed that even thongh the environmental temperatures were lower, the basal metabolism were remained at the normal level, if the bedclothes conditions were kept comfortably.
