PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 31 



naceous, and fluid, material that is necessary to be the 

 daily food of man, to supply his normal waste, to give 

 the amount of fuel sufficient to keep the human 

 mechanism in due working order. All over and above 

 this is waste, much thrown off, much also stored up as 

 fat to be called for if occasion ever require it. Hence 

 regulating diet to a nicety, by cutting off excess of those 

 foods which most go to " make fat," and such liquors 

 that do the same, was the gist of that method aiming at 

 the cure of corpulence propounded to Mr. Banting by 

 the late Mr. Harvey, and quoted now in learned medical 

 treatises as the system of " Bantingism." 



Another cause, and one which the very possession of 

 a corpulent habit only serves to perpetuate and extend, 

 is indolence indolence of body and indolence of mind. 

 To take things easily, " to laugh and grow fat," to do 

 nothing with undue expenditure of force or thought, this 

 is one of the main causes of fat production. And many 

 people, already corpulent, cannot help being lazy. It is 

 a greater effort for them to pursue even the ordinary 

 avocations of life, how much more its more arduous 

 and less necessary exertions ! Lack of energy is then 

 both cause and consequence, and as 'the fat grows the 

 muscle wastes; and to "make flesh" is a phrase which 

 often should more properly be used in the opposite 

 sense. 



