cles.

The quantity of fat which is healthy for the individual varies with the
sex, the climate, the habits, the season, the time of life, the race,
and the breed. Quetelet[3] has shown that before puberty the weight of
the male is for equal ages above that of the female, but that towards
puberty the proportional weight of the female, due chiefly to gain in
fat, increases, so that at twelve the two sexes are alike in this
respect. During the child-bearing time there is an absolute lessening on
the part of the female, but after this time the weight of the woman
increases, and the maximum is attained at about the age of fifty.

Dr. Henry I. Bowditch[4] reaches somewhat similar conclusions, and shows
from much more numerous measurements of Boston children that growing
boys are heavier in proportion to their height than girls until they
reach fifty-eight inches, which is attained about the fourteenth year.
Then the girl passes the boy in weight, which Dr. Bowditch thinks is due
to the accumulation of adipose tissue at puberty. After two or three
years more the male again acquires and retains superiority in weight and
height.

Yet as life advances there are peculiarities which belong to individuals
and to families. One group thins as life goes on past forty; another
group as surely takes on flesh; and the same traits are often inherited,
and are to be regarded when the question of fattening becomes of
clinical or diagnostic moment. Men, as a rule, preserve their nutritive
status more equably than women. Every physician must have been struck
with this. In fact, many women lose or acquire large amounts of adipose
matter without any corresponding loss or gain in vigor, and this fact
perhaps is related in some way to the enormous outside demands made by
their peculiar physiological processes. Such gain in weight is a common
accompaniment of child-bearing, while nursing in some women involves
considerable gain in flesh, and in a larger number enormous falling
away, and its cessation as speedy a renewal of fat. I have also found
that in many women who are not perfectly well there is a notable loss
of weight at every menstrual period, and a marked gain between these
times.

I was disappointed not to find this matter dealt with fully in Mrs.
Jacobi's able essay on menstruation, nor can I discover elsewhere any
observations in regard to loss or gain of weight at menstrual periods in
the healthy woman.

How much influence the se