The same of all other maladies which fat
flesh is heir to. Did you ever taste, or
inspect, a pâté de foie gras? Well, your own
liver, if too fat, is exactly like that. The
geese who subscribe personally to the making
of those costly pâtés, are purposely thrown
into an unhealthy state; and no too-obese
biped is in a better hygienic position than a
Strasbourg goose. Dropsy, swellings of the
legs, and incurable sores, are the consequence
of fat at the liver. Fat people, too, are liable
to skin diseases, and to multitudinous other
disfigurements besides.

The causes of obesity are various. First,
there is the natural disposition and constitutional
tendency to fat. Obesity may be
hereditary. Almost every one is born with
a certain predisposition, which is written on
his countenance. Out of every hundred
persons who die of consumption, ninety have
brown hair, long faces, and sharp noses. Out
of every hundred obese persons, ninety have
short faces, round eyes, and obtuse or snub
noses. It is a fact, therefore, that there are
individuals predestined to obesity, whose
digestive organs elaborate an extra quantity
of fat. You remark in society a lively little
girl, with rosy cheeks, a roguish nose, plump
hands, short broadish feet, and rounded
proportions generally. The prophetic sage
beholds her as she will be ten years hence,
and sighs over the full-blown expansion to
which her form will become developed.
Perhaps her mamma sits beside her, to tell
you what she will be, without the exercise
of second sight. It is a proof, amongst
hundreds of others, that it is not for the
happiness of man to be able to read the future.

Secondary causes of corpulence are long
indulgence in sleep in bed, and constant riding
in carriages, to the exclusion of walking
exercise. The Bedouin Arab, who is always
astir to procure the means of his nomade
existence, is never fat; nor are English
husbandmen, who live on a shilling a day,
and who earn it. Even well-fed animals of
restless and active habits, are never laden
with grease or suet; examples, the stag, the
roe-deer, the hare, the antelope. The same
of birds whose flight is prolonged and
energetic; while poultry put up to fat, are
kept in confinement. Oriental ladies, who
are compelled to stop at home, and also the
lady-abbesses of convents, often present
extraordinary instances of obesity. Further
causes are, a great fondness for farinaceous,
starchy, and sugary diet; want of thought,
as is manifest in the puffy condition of many
idiots; a great absorption of fluids, whether
water, beer, tea, or preparations of milk, or
by frequent tepid baths, or even by constantly
breathing damp air, or such as is slightly
surcharged with carbonic acid and deficient in
oxygen. At every inspiration, the more
oxygen is taken in, the more carbon (one of
the elements of fat) is thrown off from the
lungs, and consequently from the general
system. The inhabitant of the clear, pure
atmosphere of the mountain, is rarely so fat
as the resident in the moister stratum which
fills the valley.

But the grand cause of obesity, is our
eating and drinking more than enough. It
has been said that one of the privileges
of the human race is, to eat without being
hungry, and to drink without being dry.
This double propensity is found wherever
men exist. Savages indulge it, to a brutal
extent, whenever they have the
opportunity; and it is undeniable that we,
members of civilised society, both eat and drink
too much. As dinner-givers, as diners-out;
at weddings and other family meetings, at
political feasts; at charity banquets, enormous
quantities of eatables and drinkables are
consumed, of which our bodily frame stands
in no real need. Such of us as have good
stomachs, convert the surplus into fat, while
those who have bad ones transmute it into
indigestions, colics, and cramps.

The prospect for fat folk is far from
cheering; but happily there is no occasion
for them to despair so long as Dr. Dancel
shall continue to reside in Paris. He asks the
question, "Is it possible to diminish
embonpoint without injuring the health?" and he
answers it in the affirmative.

There have existed professional emaciators,
who have attained their result by a surgical
operation, which consisted in cutting a hole
in the patient and taking out his troublesome
lump of fat, very much in the way
in which the avaricious farmer opened his
goose that laid golden eggs. I have heard
of a man-cook who possessed everything
that could make life happy—health, wealth,
fame, good children, and attached friends,
who not unusually follow the rest—with
the sad drawback that he was very fat. So he
went to be operated on, and died. There is
a story of a Pasha, who was always
accompanied by a travelling surgeon, to relieve him
of his fat in this way, as often as it became
troublesome. In seventeen hundred and
eighteen, a Parisian surgeon, named Rhothonet,
is said to have delivered a noted
personage of an enormous paunch; after the
operation, the patient became slim and active.
Rhothonet was soon assailed by crowds of
persons suffering from repletion, and begging
him to undertake their alleviation. He paid
little heed to the weight of their afflictions.
He sent them all about their business, simply
telling them that the case in which he had
succeeded was a different affair to theirs.
Mystification was all the help he gave them.

Fortunately, we are able to re-assure our
fat friends; no operation is involved in the
modern system of treating their superfluities.
Dr. Dancel's grand principle is this: to
diminish embonpoint without affecting the
health, the patient must live principally on
meat (eating but a small quantity of other
aliment), and drinking but little, and that