SURFACE LAW AND ALLOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF FU NCTIONS

Since Rubner established in 1883 the ''surface law'', the basal metabo lic rate (kcal/24b) is expressed per square meter of body surface. Thi s so-called biological law has been extrapolated to the standardizatio n of several other functions as, for instance, to variables of the car diovascular, respiratory and renal systems, which may lead to erroneou s conclusions. The present paper is an attempt to establish, by means of the dimensional analysis and one of the theories of biological simi larity, an allometric indexation procedure, which yields mass-independ ent numbers (MIN) for all functions which can be defined by means of t he MLT-system of physics (M=mass; L=length; and T=time).