Comments on Corpulency, 277 



doubt intended to do wondrous works with such a powerful ad- 

 dition to her store of recipes. 



Case V. — Extract of a Letter from a facetious medical Friend, 



** Our fat landlord's occupation is no more ! he died suffo- 

 cated by his own fat ; and his disconsolate widow, who has been 

 blessed with /our doating husbands, is now in fine feather for 

 another. 



*' Poor fellow ! he wished to live, but he said * the devil was 

 in his stomach,' and truly a devil of a stomach he had. 

 Preaching abstinence was in vain. His wife, worthy woman, 

 knew his stomach as well as himself 5 she was constantly cry- 

 ing, * he will die if he be not well nourished,' while he em- 

 phatically echoed, * he knew his own inside.' So they cooked 

 the matter between them, and a fine hash they made of it. 

 He had no objection to physic ; to do him justice, his stomach 

 was more exigeant than nice, and when absolute necessity re- 

 quired the iron restraints of maigre, his kind wife always took 

 care to slip a lump of butter and a glass of brandy into his 

 gruel. But enough of the Red Lion. 



'* We have some jolly dames in this neighbourhood, tolerable 

 specimens of what you call ' obesity,' but none of the dimen- 

 sions of Park's African princesses, where no beauty aspires to 

 royal observation without having first weighed down a moderate- 

 sized camel. 



** With respect to fat gentlemen, I beg to introduce myself — 

 my height is five feet three inches, and I weigh seventeen stone, 

 and I am ready to sit for my picture, in any attitude you think 

 most favourable for giving full effect to my ' omental rotundity.' 



** But to be serious, — have we not corpulency with little fat, 

 and fat deposited several inches on the abdominal muscles, 

 especially without distended viscera ? 



** Obesity, I conceive, may be a healthy or a diseased deposite ; 

 healthy, when a superabundant nutrition is taken up by the 

 absorbent vessels, and when all the secretions of the body are 

 perfectly performed ; diseased, when a lethargic state of brain 

 induces this accumulation, to the hinderance of muscular action, 

 giving a bloated and plethoric character to the whole outline 

 of the body. • 



