WEIGHING MACHINES AND WEIGHT.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 119, 20 March 1895, Page 3

WEIGHING MACHINES AND WEIGHT.

Dr Henri do Parvillo has just arrived, snj'3 Science Sittings, after exhaustive experiments, at some conclusions tliat must liave been patent long- ago to everyone, except the idiots who patronise the automatic weighing machines. Very few persons have any accurate knowledge of their own weight. In ordinary weighings no account is taken ol the errors of the scales, of tho weight of the clothing, of the time after eating, of the condition of the body as regards heating, or of the bare metric or hygrometric state of tho atmosphere. Discarding sources of errors, the actual weight is constantly changing, being subject to innumerable influences. After breakfast on a warm day, one loses more than a third of a pound an hour, and, as 70 per cent of the body is water, our weight must constantsvary with the transpiration of moisturo. It varies, moreover with the pressure of tho atmosphere. The mere variations in atmospheric humidity may account for a change of more than a pound, and other causes may account for another pound. For these reasons, the usual iniercn-' c of a gain or loss of a few pounds in a considerable interval is to bo distrusted. Accurate scales are, howevor, not without value. Lack of a certain definite grovrh indicates impaired health in infants, while in adults a sudden increase of a pound or so 11 day denotes a tendency to disease, ami fluctuations of not more tli tin three or four ounces per day are evidence of health.