NEW FORMULAS FOR PREDICTING BASAL METABOLIC RATE FROM PULSE RATE AND PULSE PRESSURE

In their classic descriptions of thyrotoxicosis a century ago, Graves and Basedow each recorded tachycardia as a major manifestation of the syndrome. Eighty years later, when clinical calorimetry became established as a laboratory aid in the diagnosis of exophthalmic goiter, it was discovered that a relationship existed between the pulse rate and the metabolism. Benedict commented on this parallelism in his early reports, and in 1920 Sturgis and Tompkins¹ published a study of the correlation between the pulse rate and the basal metabolism in cases of hyperthyroidism. That this relationship is not peculiar to thyroid disease but is associated with the consumption of oxygen was shown by Minot and Means.² These workers studied the basal metabolic rate and pulse rate in a series of patients with leukemia and in a series of patients with thyrotoxicosis, and demonstrated that in both conditions the pulse rate varied with the consumption