30 PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 



even excessive exercise will, except at the expense of 

 health, rid him of his proclivity, although care may keep 

 it within limits. 



There are, however, many subordinate and favouring 

 causes to corpulence. The first to be mentioned is that 

 of sex. Undoubtedly women are more prone to this 

 production than their hardier brothers. Without seeking 

 for an explanation of this fact, it is better to accept it as 

 a fact, true from the beginning, and parallel with the 

 facts known as to the average stature of the sexes, that 

 women have more fat than men. 



So again, the time of life, as we have already indi- 

 cated, is a predisposing cause to corpulence. 



But there are other causes, not indeed often if ever 

 sufficient of themselves to increase the amount of the fat 

 in the body, fat which, be it remembered, is not limited 

 simply to the exterior as we are now considering it, but 

 abundant also around certain organs and in certain tissues 

 in the interior of the body. These are, first and foremost 

 the continued consumption of rich oleaginous, starchy or 

 saccharine food, and drinks, such as malt liquors and 

 alcohol. Who is not acquainted with the typical dray- 

 man, whose portly figure matches well with the rotundity 

 of the barrels on his dray, and the plump sturdy horses 

 between the shafts ? Physiologists have calculated to a 

 nicety the number of ounces of nitrogenous, carbo- 



