Comments on Corpulency. 'VfJ 



ther in a gland, became, according to this doctrine, as active as 

 gunpowder, and generally ended in a sort of critical explosion, 

 in the shape of an abscess : the omentum, as might be supposed, 

 was a frequent seat of these combustions. This is confirmed 

 by a celebrated English accoucheur — no less a person than 

 Dr. Leake, physician to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, and 

 celebrated throughout Europe for his Pilula Salutaria, who, in 

 a book published 1775, describes a species of epidemic fever, 

 that appeared among the pregnant patients, which he attributed 

 to suppuration of the omentum. Nor is the mixture of milk 

 and fat, according to these authorities, less terrific. Notwith- 

 standing they both take their principal properties from the 

 aliment, and ought to assimilate, they quarrel desperately when 

 they come in contact, which occasionally arises from a meta- 

 stasis of milk to the principal seats of fat, particularly the omen- 

 tam and loins. 



It is admitted that corpulent people, when in a state of health, 

 secrete less bile than others ; yet, from accidental causes, such 

 as acute diseases, they engender a vast quantity, and it appears 

 as if the liver assumed the power of manufacturing the fat into 

 bile. This gives rise to green bile, black bile, bilious vomitings, 

 and a thousand symptoms, not to be enumerated ; and the great 

 Ruysch is even found indulging in some fanciful notions, which 

 involve the Fallopian tubes in the consequences of some of 

 these biliary vagaries. 



The immediate action of bile upon fat is not perhaps capa- 

 ble of strict proof, though there are a variety of phenomena not 

 easily accounted for on any other principle. Nothing reduces 

 a corpulent person so rapidly as those sudden bilious evacuations 

 that take place in hot weather. Who has not seen, in what is 

 called the ^' plum season," a combustion take place, commonly 

 charged to the account of the innocent fruit, that, in the short 

 space of a few days, transforms a fat friend into a delicate 

 dandy ! It is, in fact, a bilious, adiposical diarrhoea ; and those 

 who have looked into the matter very closely, have detected 

 fat with the bile, and some keen pursuers of animal chemistry 

 have asserted that a fatty substance may be obtained from bile. 



Some French physicians have thought that acids gave a 

 character to fat ; and it has been questioned, whether the crude 



