Abstract
Few estimations of blood volume have been made on obese persons, but those obtained have indicated a small blood volume in comparison with body weight. Haldane and Smith 1 were the first to draw attention to this fact. Later, Keith, Rowntree and Geraghty 2 showed that both the blood and plasma volumes were small in certain obese patients. Rasmussen and Rasmussen 3 compared the blood volume in the woodchuck in midsummer, just before and during hibernation, and found that there was a relative reduction in blood volume when a maximum amount of fat was stored within the body. Our observations on a series of obese patients have confirmed this relationship between blood volume and excessive deposits of fatty tissue. In the present series, patients were also studied after they had lost a known amount of weight, chiefly to determine whether loss of weight brought about constant changes in blood and plasma volumes. Fourteen
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