PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 33 



almost solely. To deal first with the latter cause, 

 viz., diminished assimilation of food, let us see the 

 effect that is produced by starvation. It does not re- 

 quire a visit to a famine-stricken district to become 

 acquainted with the repulsive details. Examples enough 

 are unfortunately presented daily before our eyes, where 

 from ignorance of the simplest rules of diet, infants are 

 practically starved, although apparently highly fed. And 

 it is in infants that the effects of deprivation of food, 

 or of the administration of such food which cannot be 

 assimilated, and therefore cannot subserve nutrition, is 

 most plainly seen. The first tissue to "go," and that 

 which wastes to its largest extent is the fatty layer 

 beneath the skin. It has been calculated that as much 

 as 93 per cent, weight of fat can be lost in the process 

 of starvation a degree of wasting which far exceeds 

 that of any other tissue in the body. It is as if this 

 material is standing in reserve, to be first utilised when 

 either food is withheld, or when the processes of dis- 

 integration surpass those of growth. 



The rapidity with which the transition from the fulness 

 and rotundity of health passes into y the more or less 

 highly attenuated condition is exemplified in several affec- 

 tions, which, being of an acute character and accompanied 

 by considerable discharges from the blood, e.g., cholera, 

 drain the blood-vessels and take away fluid from them. 



