Report Reveals Facts About Convalescents' Pattern of Recovery

Forced feeding of a patient immediately after an operation or injury does him no good, a Medical School professor claims in his new book.

This finding appears in "The Metabolic Response to Surgery," published today and written by Dr. Francis D. Moors '35, Mosely Professor of Surgery at the Medical School and Surgeon-in-Chief of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Miss Margaret A. Ball '38 of the hospital's Laboratory of Surgical Research assisted in the work.

The study is intended to provide the practicing surgeon with "a more accurate quantitative concept of the chemical changes" experienced by his patients recovering from burns, injury, wounds, or operation.

The authors state that chemical changes in a convalescent patient follow a definite pattern and are apparently set off by the release of hormones the injury produces.

Four stages in the chemical pattern of convalescence are listed in the report: a few days of acute illness, and intermediate stage, a period when the patient begins to feel normal, and the final phase of "fat gain" until the body's nitrogen is again in balance.

Excessive feeding during the first three stages is pointless, Moors concludes, because the body is not ready to take up proteins and calories.