Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/344

328 continues through youth to puberty, when liberty arrives more or less speedily to do in all such matters "as others do." On reaching manhood, the individual in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred acquires the prevailing habit of his associates, and he feeds after that uniform prescription of diet which prevails, with little disposition to question its suitability to himself. A young fellow in the fullness of health, and habituated to daily active life in the open air, may, under the stimulus of appetite and enjoyment in gratifying it, often largely exceed both in quantity and variety of food what is necessary to supply all the demands of his system, without paying a very exorbitant price for the indulgence. If the stomach is sensitive or not very powerful, it sometimes rejects an extravagant ration of food, either at once or soon after the surfeit has been committed; but, if the digestive force is considerable, the meals, habitually superabundant as they may be, are gradually absorbed, and the surplus fund of nutrient material unused is stored up in some form. When a certain amount has been thus disposed of, the capacity for storage varying greatly in different persons, an undesirable balance remains against the feeder, and in young people is mostly rectified by a "bilious attack," through the agency of which a few hours of vomiting and misery square the account. Then the same process of overfeeding recommences with renewed appetite and sensations of invigorated digestion, until in two or three, or five or six weeks, according to the ratio existing between the amount of food ingested and the habit of expending or eliminating it from the body, the recurring attack appears and again clears the system, and so on during several years of life. If the individual takes abundant exercise and expends much energy in the business of life, a large quantity of food can be properly disposed of. Such a person enjoys the pleasure of satisfying a healthy appetite, and doing so with ordinary prudence not only takes no harm, but consolidates the frame and enables it to resist those manifold unseen sources of evil which are prone to affect injuriously the feeble. On the other hand, if he is inactive, takes little exercise, spends most of his time in close air and in a warm temperature, shaping his diet nevertheless on the liberal scheme just described, the balance of unexpended nutriment soon tells more or less heavily against him, and must be thrown off in some form or another.

After the first half or so of life has passed away, instead of periodical sickness, the unemployed material may be relegated in the form of fat to be stored on the external surface of the body, or be packed among the internal organs, and thus he or she may become corpulent and heavy, if a facility for converting appropriate material into fat is consistent with the constitution of the individual; for some constitutions appear to be without the power of storing fat, however rich the diet or inactive their habits may be. When, therefore, this process can not take place, and in many instances also when it is in action, the