gards food and exercise, just as he did before; the consequence is, that the juices which used to be applied to the enlargement and completion of the members, are from this time produced in a superabundance, which turns to fat. The same is the case with people who have lost their arms or legs. As they eat and drink no less, though they have no longer those limbs to nourish, they become in general exceedingly plethoric and fat, since they daily retain a quantity of nutritious juices that is not distributed as formerly in the deficient members.

From these observations any one who wishes for rotundity of form will know how to proceed in order to obtain that desirable quality. I am not so biassed, however, as to assert that no advantage whatever is attached to corpulence. A fat man may tumble into the water with less apprehension than a raw-boned figure; because the fat being a substance of a lighter nature is better calculated to keep him afloat than the muscle of the latter, who needs the aid of a couple of blown bladders or of cork to give him the buoyancy which the former derives from his portly paunch. As fat saves from drowning, so also it may preserve for a time from the effects of intense frost, because it protects the flesh from the inclemency of the weather. On other accounts it would not be well to have no fat: for it renders the joints supple and fitter for motion; it prevents the friction of contiguous parts, keeping them always moist and slippery; it communicates a greasiness to the skin which renders it soft and smooth, and defends it from the sharpness of the air; it unites the fibres of the muscles into compact masses, and

secures them from becoming entangled with each other, and with the minute vessels and nerves which are every where distributed among them; it serves the purpose of a soft and compressible cushion on which we sit and lie more comfortably; it prevents wrinkles, by imparting a pleasing plumpness to the contours of the body; and it adds to the whiteness of the complexion, owing to the transparency of the skin, wherefore the sick and meagre people usually have a sallow look. All these are real benefits, but they are attached to a moderate degree of corpulence alone.

Quesnay calculated that a grown person, when in his natural state, ought to have about eight pounds of fat. The average weight of a man is about one hundred and sixty pounds: but as there have been very fat people who have weighed four, five, nay even six hundred pounds, it may easily be imagined, that in these cases there must have been a prodigious deviation from the state of nature. There have been seen persons with fat six inches deep under the skin; and similar instances have been known among brutes. Hogs have been made so fat that their skin was fifteen inches above the bone. An ox, which otherwise would weigh five or six hundred weight, may be fatted to nearly a ton and a half, which is half the weight of an elephant. These astonishing deviations from nature cannot possibly be attended with beneficial results; and of this physicians in all ages have been fully aware. It is an observation as ancient as Hippocrates, that health, when at the highest, as in the fat athlete, was precarious, because it

could not then experience any change, unless for the worse. Celsus considered a square-built figure, neither too fat nor too lean, as the best. Sanctorius observed, that after the process of digestion is finished daily, a man ought to be as heavy as he was before it, if he is in perfect health. But how can this hold good respecting people, who, after every meal, add to their weight a considerable quantity of superfluous juices?

In enumerating the dangers to which very corpulent persons are exposed, I shall quote the words of other physicians, without taking any personal share in these sinister predictions. Apoplexies hold a prominent place in the list. Hippocrates knew from experience, that fat persons more commonly die a sudden death than lean ones; and so he says in several places. Boerhaave ascribes the disposition of corpulent persons to apoplexies, to the obstructed circulation of the blood through the vessels compressed by the fat. The blood gives way to this pressure, and accumulates in those places where there is no fat to prevent the expansion of the vessels. As then the brain never becomes fat, the blood accumulates in its vessels and expands them to such a degree that they burst, which is frequently the immediate cause of apoplexy. Haller mentions it as a fact universally known, that corpulent persons are disposed to apoplexy. The annals of medicine relate, that a man who, though weighing upwards of six hundred pounds, nevertheless possessed extraordinary agility, and whose waistcoat would button, without straining, round seven men of ordinary imensions, died in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, Leaving a pregnant wife and five children. Louis Coute,

who measured eight feet round the body, and whose fat, after the removal of the skin, was, from the outer surface to the abdominal muscles, between thirteen and fourteen inches thick,-in short, a man weighing eight hundred pounds, died in his forty-sixth year of ароplexy. The intestines were neither larger nor fatter than in an ordinary subject. His liver, on the other hand, was triangular and indurated; and it was attached for the space of five inches to the omentum. No person can hesitate to believe such evidence, which is moreover confirmed by the experience of all ages.

Somnolency is another complaint to which corpulent persons are liable. Boerhaave once had an interview with a doctor, who had grown fat with frequent unnecessary bleeding, and who was so lethargic that he fell asleep at least ten times during their conversation. Athenæus relates of Dionysius, tyrant of Heraclea, that he was so sleepy, owing to his excessive corpulence, that it was impossible to keep him awake without thrusting pins through the fat into his flesh.

The insensibility and stupidity of corpulent persons go hand-in-hand with this disease; for the fat covers and buries the nerves, which must be touched by sensible objects, in order to our having any perception of them. It moreover compresses and paralyses the muscles, the nerves of which also it incapacitates for moving them. Nichomachus, of Smyrna, was by corpulence rendered incapable of locomotion; and we have had instances in England of persons, who, from the same cause, could scarcely stir from the spot. The meagre animals, on the contrary, which might be supposed to be weak, such as greyhounds, racers, and

hunters among horses, stags, &c. are remarkable for their agility, and appear to fly through the air.

As the exuberant fat compresses the lungs, it is obvious why corpulent persons experience a difficulty of respiration, and are sometimes suddenly suffocated. The same thing frequently happens to ortolans and other birds, which are apt to grow very fat. Similar instances are related of men. Aristotle makes mention of a man who was suffocated by his fat, which was six inches thick; and Dionis observes, that infants at the breast are sometimes carried off in the same way, because the milk contains many butyraceous particles, which are easily transformed into fat. Hippocrates also was acquainted with this species of death. Corpulent persons, says he, are frequently suffocated by inflammatory fevers and shortness of breath, and in general die suddenly.

The corpulent have also reason to apprehend a deficiency of blood. Their alimentary juices are deposited in too great quantity, and as it were in a crude state in the cellular substance, because their impaired powers are incapable of digesting them. The bloodvessels, moreover, are too much compressed by fat to be able to contain much blood. On this account, Boerhaave makes a fundamental distinction between fat and plethoric persons. "The corpulent," says he, " are considered as plethoric, because they are out of breath at the slightest motion; because the most trifling circumstance impels the blood to the head; and because they are so liable to apoplexy." But all this merely proves that the blood does not flow freely through the straitened vessels, and by no means that