280 Comments on Corpulency, 



suffer, all of which I have hitherto combated successfully. 

 Yesterday, however, he took a new position : — he had doubts 

 on a moral ground. — * It is a bad example/ said he, * for 



If all the world 

 Should, in a fit of temperance, feed on pulse. 

 Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, 

 Th' All-giver would be unthanked.* 



Observations. — The person alluded to in this letter, as might 

 be supposed, died suddenly. He was a very sensible man, a 

 perfect gentleman, a fine scholar, with a playful wit^ that made 

 him a most agreeable companion ; and his temper was cast in 

 that happy mould which " looks at everything on its most fa- 

 vourable side." The Doctor thought '* he would fatten on 

 sawdust," and truly, like Father Paul, *• the little he took pros- 

 pered with him." He grew fat in spite of starvation, which he 

 enforced with some pertinacity, though he was constantly fur- 

 nishing ingenious apologies for following the natural bent of 

 his inclinations.* The most distressing symptom he had to 

 contend with was difficulty of breathing. He constantly com- 

 plained of oppression about the prsecordium, and he had all the 

 symptoms of hydrothorax. But having seen many cases Avith 

 similar symptoms, where fat impeded the functions of life, I 

 was always impressed with the notion, that it was fat and not 

 water that oppressed the heart, and so it proved to be on 

 examination. 



I had an opportunity of examining the body, which presented 

 one of the most extraordinary internal accumulations of adeps 1 

 ever witnessed. The heart itself was a mass of fat. The 

 omentum was a thick fat apron. The whole of the intestinal 

 canal was imbedded in fat, as if melted tallow had been poured 

 into the cavity of the abdomen ; and the diaphragm and the 

 parietes of the abdomen must have been strained to the utmost 

 extent of their bearing to have sustained the extreme and con- 

 stant pressure of such a weighty mass. 



* A humorous author has given an account of a person of this kind, a worthy 

 woman, who kept adding growth unto growth, "giving a sum of more to that which 

 had too much," till the result was worthy of a Smithfield premium. This was not 

 the triumph of any systematic diet for the production of fat ; on the contrary, she 

 lived abstemiously, diluting her food with pickles, acids, and keeping frequent fasts 

 in order to reduce her compass ; but they were of no avail. Nature had planned an 

 original tendency in her organization that was not to be overcome : she would have 

 fatted on sour krout. 



