Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/345

Rh oversupply of nutritious elements ingested must go somewhere, more or less directly, to produce disease in some other form, probably at first interfering with the action of the liver, and next appearing as gout or rheumatism, or to cause fluxes and obstructions of various kinds. Thus recurring attacks of gout perform the same duty, or nearly so, at this period of life, that the bilious attacks accomplished in youth, only the former process is far more damaging to the constitution and materially injures it. In relation to liver derangement and inordinate fat production, we may see the process rapidly performed before our eyes, if we so desire, in the cellars of Strasburg. For the unfortunate goose who is made by force to swallow more nutritive matter than is good for him in the shape of food which, excellent in appropriate conditions, is noxious to the last degree when not expended by the consumer—I mean good milk and barley-meal—falls a victim in less than a month of this gluttonous living to that form of fatty liver which under the name of foie gras offers an irresistible charm to the gourmet at most well-furnished tables. The animal being thus fed is kept in a close, warm temperature and without exercise, a mode of feeding and a kind of life which one need not after all go to Strasburg to observe, since it is not difficult to find an approach to it, and to watch the principle carried out, although only to a less considerable extent, anywhere and everywhere around us. Numerous individuals of both sexes, who have no claim by the possession of ornithological characteristics to consanguinity with the animal just named, may be said neverlessnevertheless [sic] to manifest signs of relation in some sort thereto—not creditable perhaps—to the goose, the Strasburg dietary being an enforced one—by their habit of absorbing superfluous quantities of nutriment while living a life of inactivity, and of course sooner or later become invalid in body, unhappy in temper, and decrepit in regard of mental power.

For let us observe that there are two forces concerned in this matter of bountiful feeding which must be considered a little further. I have said that a hearty, active young fellow may eat, perhaps, almost twice as much as he requires to replace the expenditure of his life and repair the loss of the machine in its working without much inconvenience. He, being robust and young, has two functions capable of acting at the maximum degree of efficiency. He has a strong digestion, and can convert a large mass of food into fluid aliment suitable for absorption into the system: that is function the first. But, besides this, he has the power of bringing into play an active eliminating force, which rids him of all the superfluous materials otherwise destined,