CONCERNING CORPULENCE. 445 



report upon the case from one of the Medical Visitors in Lunacy. If 

 the English law were not more careful about property than about life, 

 it would long ago have acted upon this principle in criminal trials. 



However, he who advocates a reform in the legal proceedings of 

 this country is assuredly a voice crying in the wilderness, and with 

 less result than the Baptist had when he cried aloud there. It is 

 not likely that any thing we can say will induce those who have the 

 privilege or pain of constituting our government to leave for a time the 

 ambitious struggles of politics, and to devote their energies to a reform 

 of the law. And yet a government could not be better employed 

 than in laboring to effect such a reform. A system of just laws and 

 a simple and expeditious administration of justice would assuredly 

 conduce more to the welfare of the community than years of parlia- 

 mentary squabbles about politics. Many parliamentary questions 

 which have occupied much time and made a great show in their day 

 will look very small, if they are ever heard of at all, in history, while the 

 reputations that grew out of them will have been lost in oblivion ; but 

 an effectual reform of the jurisprudence of the country, which is now 

 an urgent need, would be a lasting benefit to the community, and an 

 eternal honor to the statesman who initiated and carried it through. 

 Abstract from the Journal of Mental Science. 







CONCERNING CORPULENCE. 



By W. J. YOUMANS, M. D. 



MR. BANTING had defective hearing, and consulted a physician 

 for his deafness. The doctor was William Harvey, aural sur- 

 geon to the Royal Dispensary for Diseases of the Ear, and also for the 

 great Northern Hospital of London. Dr. Harvey told the patient that 

 his deafness was complicated with his corpulence, for Mr. Banting was 

 very fat. He told him that, to improve his hearing, it would be neces- 

 sary to reduce his obesity, and he prescribed a diet for the. purpose. 

 This was good news for Mr. Banting ; he had come to get his ears 

 syringed for deafness, and a way was pointed out by which he could 

 get back his hearing and get rid of .his burden of adipose at the same 

 time. He commenced the dietetic treatment, and so successful did it 

 prove in relieving his corpulence, that he rushed into print to convey 

 the glad tidings to all over-unctuous people. He thus became immor- 

 tal as a philanthropist, and enriched our speech with a new term 

 Bantingism which wdl last as long as the literature of fatness 

 endures. Banting was, however, only a layman, after all, and his am- 

 bition was satisfied to produce a pamphlet ; but now comes the doc* 



