Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/464

450 blood-vessels is vastly increased in aggregate bulk, while at the same time no corresponding increase takes place in the forces which supply the means of action to those capillaries. Hence there is a comparative weakness in the conservative vital processes, and any injury to a part, especially if remotely situated, is less easily repaired.

The senses of hearing, taste, and smell, are frequently much impaired in corpulent people, a condition due in the majority of cases, according to Dr. Harvey, to deposits of fat in the organs concerned. The nasal passages, mouth, and throat, are, as all know, lined with mucous membrane, which continues through the Eustachian tubes into the middle ear. This mucous membrane may become the seat of a fatty deposit, and thus impair the function of the part. The sense of smell depends upon the contact of odorous emanations with the sensitive olfactory membrane, and such contact can only take place when there is a free passage for them through the nose. If the nasal membranes become thickened from any cause, thus partially or wholly preventing the passage of air, the capacity of smell is correspondingly affected. The sense of taste, which, to according many physiologists, is properly limited to the perception of the acid, bitter, sweet, or saline properties of food, does not appear to suffer; but the power to recognize and enjoy flavors, which is commonly associated with taste, but which in reality belongs to the nose, is sometimes lost along with the sense of smell. Access of air to the middle ear through the Eustachian tubes is an essential to the sense of hearing, and this, too, is greatly interfered with oftentimes by the fatty thickening of the mucous membrane of the nose and throat. At all events, whatever the nature of the cause, it has resulted, in great numbers of cases where corpulence was attended by these defects of sense, that removal of the deposit by a proper dietary has been immediately followed by recovery, after all sorts of local remedies had failed to afford relief.

Dr. Harvey thinks that both gout and rheumatism are aggravated by corpulence. Another troublesome attendant is. a tendency to the formation of gravel and calculus. In regard to this, Dr. Harvey states that, after the usual remedies prescribed for its relief have completely failed, he has seen a well-directed dietary, designed with a view to restraining the formation of adipose, completely successful in finally preventing these distressing formations.

Although obesity may be ranked among the diseases arising from original imperfection in the functions of some of the organs, it is also, without doubt, most intimately connected with our habits of life. The inconveniences arising from it are, therefore, to be removed by correcting those habits, especially such as relate to diet and regimen. Drugs without number have been tried, both for the removal of corpulence itself, and for the many troubles to which it gives rise; but they have almost uniformly failed when diet and exercise have been neglected. On the other hand, attention to these points, persistently carried out,