he age of two weighed 75 pounds.

Figure 170 represents Miss "Millie Josephine" of Chicago, a recent
exhibitionist, who at the reputed age of thirteen was 5 feet 6 inches
tall and weighed 422 pounds.

General Remarks.--It has been chiefly in Great Britain and in Holland
that the most remarkable instances of obesity have been seen,
especially in the former country colossal weights have been recorded.
In some countries corpulency has been considered an adornment of the
female sex. Hesse-Wartegg refers to the Jewesses of Tunis, who when
scarcely ten years old are subjected to systematic treatment by
confinement in narrow, dark rooms, where they are fed on farinaceous
foods and the flesh of young puppies until they are almost a shapeless
mass of fat. According to Ebstein, the Moorish women reach with
astonishing rapidity the desired embonpoint on a diet of dates and a
peculiar kind of meal.

In some nations and families obesity is hereditary, and generations
come and go without a change in the ordinary conformation of the
representatives. In other people slenderness is equally persistent, and
efforts to overcome this peculiarity of nature are without avail.

Treatment of Obesity.--Many persons, the most famous of whom was
Banting, have advanced theories to reduce corpulency and to improve
slenderness; but they have been uniformly unreliable, and the whole
subject of stature-development presents an almost unexplored field for
investigation. Recently, Leichtenstein, observing in a case of myxedema
treated with the thyroid gland that the subcutaneous fat disappeared
with the continuance of the treatment, was led to adopt this treatment
for obesity itself and reports striking results. The diet of the
patient remained the same, and as the appetite was not diminished by
the treatment the loss of weight was evidently due to other causes than
altered alimentation. He holds that the observations in myxedema, in
obesity, and psoriasis warrant the belief that the thyroid gland
eliminates a material having a regulating influence upon the
constitution of the panniculus adiposus and upon the nutrition of the
skin in general. There were 25 patients in all; in 22 the effect was
entirely satisfactory, the loss of weight amounting to as much as 9.5
kilos (21 pounds). Of the three cases in which the result was not
satisfactory, one had nephritis with severe Graves' disease, and the
third psoriasis. Charrin has used the injections of thyro