84 LOCOMOTION. [CHAP. in. 



observation, " Fat, fair, and forty : " in old age and decrepitude, the 

 adipose deposit greatly diminishes. 



Differences are also constantly seen in individuals, which can be 

 referred only to an original constitutional bent. Thus young 

 children are occasionally so overloaded with this tissue as to be 

 unable to follow their sports ; and it is not uncommon for a similar 

 tendency to manifest itself towards the adult period, particularly 

 in girls. In elderly persons, fat is especially prone to be accumu- 

 lated over the abdomen, and between the layers of the epiploon and 

 mesentery. Instances where it attains the thickness of three or 

 four inches under the skin of the belly are not unfrequent in corpu- 

 lent persons. A similar abundance occasions the " double chin." 



It is perhaps possible for the body to grow so egregiously fat as 

 to become lighter than water ; but whether implicit faith is to be 

 placed in the story of the Italian priest Paolo Moccia, who weighed 

 thirty pounds less than his bulk of water, and therefore could not 

 sink in that fluid, we do not pretend to decide. The excessive 

 deposit of this substance constitutes a disease, which has been not 

 very correctly called polysarcia. John Bull is celebrated for his 

 pronenesss to accumulate fat : M. Blainville remarks, with naivete, 

 " We have seen many individuals of the English nation whom 

 embonpoint had rendered almost monstrous ; and I remember among 

 others, a man exhibited at the Palais Royal who weighed five 

 hundred pounds. He was literally as broad as he was long." 



Among the Hottentot women, the fat is apt to gather in the 

 buttocks, and is considered a prominent mark of beauty ; but this 

 does not usually occur till after the first pregnancy. A somewhat 

 analogous formation exists in a variety of sheep,* reared by the 

 pastoral tribes of Asia, in which a large mass of fat covers the 

 buttocks and takes the place of the tail, appearing when viewed 

 from behind as a double hemisphere, in the notch of which the 

 coccyx is buried, but is just perceptible to the touch. These pro- 

 tuberances, when very large, fluctuate from side to side, and some- 

 times attain the weight of thirty or forty pounds. 



The quantity of fat in a moderately fat man is estimated by 

 Beclard at about the twentieth of the weight of the body. 



Fat is found in the following situations in the human body : in 

 the orbits, in the cheeks, the palms of the hands and soles of the 

 feet, at the flexures of the joints, and between the folds of thf 

 synovial membranes of joints, around the kidneys, in the mesentery 



* Ovis steatopyga, fat-buttocked sheep. Pallas. 



