328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cess continues through youth to puberty, when liberty arrives more 

 or less speedily to do in all such matters " as others do." On reach- 

 ing 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 sup- 

 ply 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 digest- 

 ive force is considerable, the meals, habitually superabundant as they 

 may be, are gradually absorbed, and the surplus fund of nutrient ma- 

 terial unused is stored up in some form. When a certain amount has 

 been thus disposed of, the capacity for storage varying greatly in dif- 

 ferent 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 ac- 

 count. Then the same process of overfeeding recommences with re- 

 newed 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 sys- 

 tem, 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 en- 

 joys 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 in- 

 active, 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 periodi- 

 cal 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 constitu- 

 tions 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 



