Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/463

Rh juices are freely consumed, but, when the season is over, the superabundant adipose tissue is gradually lost. It is said that, among the Asiatics, there are Bramins [sic] who pride themselves on their extreme corpulency. Their diet consists of farinaceous vegetables, milk, sugar, sweetmeats, and ghee, a species of Indian butter. Dr. Fothergill remarks, that a strictly vegetable diet produces excess of fat more certainly than other means.

The use of a large amount of liquid in the diet also favors the deposit of fat. Alcoholic drinks are especially objectionable in this respect, for, according to Dr. Harvey, the elements which are chemically convertible into fat are rendered more fattening if alcoholic liquids be added to them in the stomach; perhaps, because of the power which alcoholic liquids possess of lessening or delaying destructive metamorphosis.

Inactivity, by decreasing waste in the system, acts in a negative way toward the production of obesity. In order to fatten animals, they are habitually confined, and, if the process is to be a rapid one, they are kept in the dark as a means of securing the utmost quiet. Now, indolence on the part of the human animal, associated, as it generally is, with excessive eating and drinking, and much sleep, constitutes a similar set of conditions, and is likely to lead to a similar result.

The consequences of obesity are often more serious than is generally believed. To put aside the many minor inconveniences, which, however, may be sufficiently annoying to make the sufferer desirous of reducing his weight, it may be taken as a general rule that obesity does not conduce to longevity. Usually it is accompanied with diminished vital power; there are disturbances of the organs of respiration, circulation, and digestion. The blood is proportionately deficient in quantity or quality, and the muscles are weak and have but little firmness. And, although the disposition is often sanguine, so that the sufferer continues lively and cheerful, and has the happy habit of looking at the best side of every thing, yet physical and mental occupations are generally uncongenial. There are several notable exceptions to this, however, and many can call to mind cases where both the bodily and mental habits are quite as active in the obese as in others. Maccaz gives the case of an enormously fat man, whom he met at Pavia, that was celebrated as a dancer, and whose movements were exceedingly agile and graceful. David Hume and Napoleon may be instanced as examples where corpulence was associated with great mental powers; and Raggi, an Italian physician, who was an eminent authority on corpulence, relates numerous cases of extreme obesity in which the intellect remained quite alert to the last. Nevertheless, the rule holds good that extreme fatness is very much in the way of either bodily or mental work.

By an over-development of adipose tissue the capillary system of