6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE IMPEDIMENT OF ADIPOSE. A CELEBRATED 



CASE. 



Bt E. VALE BLAKE. 



FROM the days of Hippocrates, intelligent medical observers have 

 noticed that an unusual accumulation of fat, far from adding to 

 the strength of a person, was a source of physical weakness, and, to a 

 certain extent, an outward sign of incapacity ; that it limited activity 

 and shortened life. It is only in comparatively modern times that sci- 

 entific experimentalists have ascertained precisely how the system gen- 

 erally, and the heart particularly, is affected either by the overloading 

 or infiltration of superfluous fatty matter upon or in its muscular sub- 

 stance. In fact, it was not until the microscope was carefully applied 

 to the investigation that the disease now known as " fatty degenera- 

 tion " was really understood. 



Every one knows that a certain amount of adipose matter in the 

 human system impedes rapidity of motion. No sportsman would back 

 a pedestrian who turned the scale at three hundred pounds, for in- 

 stance ; but there are other kinds of impedimenta to the human facul- 

 ties which are certainly to be traced to superfluous fat, though this is 

 rarely suspected of being the cause. A common case is that of the 

 obese gourmand who complains that nothing tastes as it used to ; on 

 whose palate, formerly so sensitive, everything palls, and fails to 

 awaken the delicious sensations of former days. He is very apt to 

 attribute the change to the incompetent chef de cuisine, or even to 

 degenerate Nature herself, in not growing the same quality in bird or 

 fish ; while the looker-on is apt to imagine that the change results 

 from mere satiety. But suppose we had our fat friend on the dissect- 

 ing-table, what should we probably find ? No doubt, insidious deposits 

 of fatty matter which have impeded the lively sensations of the organs 

 of taste and smell, the latter of which so greatly aids the imagination 

 and assists in the pleasure of the table. In the " Medico-Chirurgical 

 Transactions," of 1870, Dr. W. Ogle gives five distinct cases of anos- 

 mia arising from an excess of fatty deposit permeating the cells of the 

 olfactory apparatus. 



Still more curious, and as generally unsuspected, is the deposit of 

 adipose tissue as a cause of deafness ; and this not directly in the or- 

 gans of hearing, but in the canals leading to the air-passages of the 

 nose and throat. This naturally requires some explanation to non- 

 professionals, though the fact is well established. It results from the 

 sympathetic connection which is formed by the continuous mucous 

 membrane, which covers at once the interior of the mouth and throat, 

 the pendulous palate, the tonsils, the isthmus of the fauces, and the 



