severe pain. Cessation of these attacks for a time is
sure to result in the putting on of flesh. The case of Captain
Catlin[10] is a good example. Owing to an accident of war, he lost a
leg, and ever since has had severe neuralgic pain referred to the lost
leg. These attacks depend almost altogether on storms. In years of
fewest storms they are least numerous, and the bodily weight, which is
never insufficient, rises. With their increase it lowers to a certain
amount, beneath which it does not fall. His weight is, therefore,
indirectly dependent upon the number of storms to the influence of which
he is exposed.

At present, however, we have to do most largely with the means of
attaining that moderate share of stored-away fat which seems to indicate
a state of nutritive prosperity and to be essential to those physical
needs, such as protection and padding, which fat subserves, no less than
to its aesthetic value, as rounding the curves of the human form.

The study of the amount of the different forms of diet which is needed
by people at rest, and by those who are active, is valuable only to
enable us to construct dietaries with care for masses of men and where
economy is an object. In dealing with cases such as I shall describe, it
is needful usually to give and to have digested a surplus of food, so
that we are more concerned now to know the forms of food which thin or
fatten, and the means which aid us to digest temporarily an excess.

As to quantity, it suffices to say that while by lessening food we may
easily and surely make people lose weight, we cannot be sure to fatten
by merely increasing the amount of food given; something more is wanted
in the way of digestives or tonics to enable the patient to prepare and
appropriate what is given, and but too often we fail miserably in all
our means of giving capacity to assimilate food. As I have said before,
and wish to repeat, to gain in fat is, in the feeble, nearly always to
gain in blood; and I hope to point out in these pages some of the means
by which these ends can be attained.

_Note_.--The statements made on page 21 and the following
paragraphs about obesity in England and with us are no longer
exact, but have been allowed to stand in the text as recording
facts true at the time of writing them, in 1877. At the present a
medical observer familiar with both countries must note several
decided changes: more fat people, more people