DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 329 



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 con- 

 ditions, is noxious to the last degree when not expended by the con- 

 sumer 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 gour- 

 met 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 character- 

 istics to consanguinity with the animal just named, may be said never- 

 less 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 mat- 

 ter 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 inconven- 

 ience. He, being robust and young, has two functions capable of act- 

 ing 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, 



* In passing I would strongly commend the condition of those poor beasts to the con- 

 sideration of the Antivivisection Society, since more disease is artificially produced among 

 them in order to furnish our tables with the " pdle " than by all the physiologists of Eu- 

 rope who in the interest, not of the human palate, but of human progress as affected by 

 therapeutic knowledge, sometimes propagate and observe certain unknown forms of dis- 

 ease among a few of the lower animals. 



