ich would in this country be
destructive of health. These habits aid, I suspect, in producing the
more general fatness in middle and later life, and those enormous
occasional growths which so amaze an American when first he sets foot in
London. But, whatever be the cause, it is probable that members of the
prosperous classes of English, over forty, would outweigh the average
American of equal height of that period, and this must make, I should
think, some difference in their relative liability to certain forms of
disease, because the overweight of our trans-Atlantic cousins is plainly
due to excess of fat.

I have sought in vain for English tables giving the weight of men and
women of various heights at like ages. The material for such a study of
men in America is given in Gould's researches published by the United
States Sanitary Commission, and in Baxter's admirable report,[6] but is
lacking for women. A comparison of these points as between English and
Americans of both sexes would be of great interest.

I doubt whether in this country as notable a growth in bulk as
multitudes of English attain would be either healthy or desirable in
point of comfort, owing to the distress which stout people feel in our
hot summer weather. Certainly "Banting" is with us a rarely-needed
process, and, as a rule, we have much more frequent occasion to fatten
than to thin our patients. The climatic peculiarities which have changed
our voices, sharpened our features, and made small the American hand and
foot, have also made us, in middle and advanced life, a thinner and
more sallow race, and, possibly, adapted us better to the region in
which we live. The same changes in form are in like manner showing
themselves in the English race in Australia.[7]

Some gain in flesh as life goes on is a frequent thing here as
elsewhere, and usually has no unwholesome meaning. Occasionally we see
people past the age of sixty suddenly taking on fat and becoming at once
unwieldy and feeble, the fat collecting in masses about the belly and
around the joints. Such an increase is sometimes accompanied with fatty
degeneration of the heart and muscles, and with a certain watery
flabbiness in the limbs, which, however, do not pit on pressure.

Alcoholism also gives rise in some people to a vast increase of adipose
tissue, and the sodden, unwholesome fatness of the hard drinker is a
sufficiently well known and unpleasant spectacle. The overgrowth of
inert pe