Body Water, Height, and Weight During Growth in Normal Children

DARROW¹ devoted a considerable part of his life to the study of body composition and to the search for physiological determinants that would be meaningful to the clinician and the investigator. His concern with body water and electrolyte changes was not only related to the elucidation of homeostatic mechanisms but also to the demonstration of the constancy of body composition. He was one of the earliest workers to appreciate the value of lean body weight (ie, the weight minus either extractable fat or the body water divided by 0.72) as a base line for physiological measurements. It is not surprising, therefore, that those of us who were privileged to follow his teaching, but presently armed with highly sophisticated calculators, should seek to find mathematical relationships between body water or lean body weight and the readily available clinical measurements, height and weight. We have been concerned with the measurement of