28 ' PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 



by for the more interesting group. It is notorious that 

 persons of spare habit are not only capable of resisting 

 more fatigue than others, but they often show far more 

 resistance to the inroads of disease. This is especially 

 the case with acute diseases, e.g., fevers. As a rule there 

 is more vitality, more ability to struggle with the violent 

 disorders of nutrition in such diseases among spare 

 people than among the stout, so that a lank ungainly 

 habit has its compensation, it is more often tenacious of 

 existence than the apparently but not really more robust 

 frame. 



When we turn to the opposite condition to leanness 

 we find ourselves trenching upon the borders of disease, 

 for that beyond a certain extent corpulence is non-natural 

 may be admitted, and that it is dependent on defects in 

 the working of the animal mechanism is highly probable. 

 In infancy, fat production is paramount ; the food of the 

 infant is rich in materials for its formation, and although 

 growth is proceeding with marvellous rapidity, yet a thin 

 babe is an abnormality, a witness to improper feeding so 

 common among all classes. The inert, almost vegetable, 

 existence of the suckling infant favours this storage of fat, 

 and its plump cheeks, its chubby extremities marked 

 by deep furrows at their flexures, are indications of this 

 storage. But as has been pointed out, even in this early 

 period of existence the production of fat may exceed the 



