6 PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 



eases give, or by not knowing the limits to which a body 

 performing all its functions well enough to be con- 

 sidered healthy may exhibit a leanness to which he 

 would feel inclined to apply the term of illness. Still, 

 with some few exceptions, he would be in the main right. 

 If he were asked to push his conclusions further, and to 

 point out among the unhealthy ones those whom he 

 deemed most and those least ill, and try and construct 

 a scale of ill-health from the frames before him, it is 

 likely that he would go very wide of the mark indeed. 



Now it is the object of this little book to try and explain 

 as briefly as possible how and why variations that are so 

 plain on the surface can be taken as indices of disorder 

 within, to give the reasons for form-changes which occur 

 within the limits of health, and for those which mark the 

 departure from those boundaries. It cannot be denied 

 that this is a subject of very great importance; but 

 it is beset with difficulties on all sides, difficulties such 

 as those which the mere definitions of the terms " health'* 

 and " non-health " imply. 



One great difficulty stares us in the face at the outset, 

 and it is this : although built up on a definite plan, when 

 viewed from the standpoint of the morphologist alone, 

 the individual variations in the form of the body, slight 

 though they be, are yet so numerous as to dispel once 

 and for all any notion that there is an ideal of human 

 form which can be described in so many words. Of 



