OBESITY,
or any degree of excess in weight. Time, from ten days up. The weight, in this disorder, will diminish under the influence of fasting—by the waste and excretion of material that can best be spared (fat)—at the rate of from one to three pounds, or more, a day, which rate of progress can be increased, happily, by exercise in the open air. Entire abstinence from food will cause the fat to disappear, but there can be no regeneration of the muscular system—on the contrary, it must continue to deteriorate—without exercise. It is better, therefore, to keep up a good degree of exercise, and to eat a limited amount of food daily. It is not that the fat person eats or digests more than the lean one (he may not eat nearly as much in fact), but he excretes less. Exercise in the open air favors the excretion of waste matters which otherwise would be deposited in the cellular tissues. The fatty degeneration so much admired in infancy, aids in the production of emaciation and consumption at adult age.
A fat person, at whatever period of life, has not a sound tissue in his body; not only is the entire muscular system degenerated with the fatty particles,[54]
but the vital organs—heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, liver, etc.—are likewise mottled throughout, like rust spots in a steel watch-spring, liable to fail at any moment.
[54] A slice of steak from the loin of a stall-fed ox exhibits this disease very clearly: mark its “well mixed” appearance (a token of praise to the ignorant or reckless epicure), where the muscular tissue has given place to the globules of fat which denote unexcreted excess in diet, and deficient nutrition, from lack of exercise.
The gifted Gambetta, whom M. Rochefort styled a “fatted satrap,” died (far under his prime) because of this depraved condition: a slight gun-shot wound, from which a “clean” man would have speedily recovered, ended this obese diabetic’s life. Events sufficiently similar are constantly occurring on both sides of the water; every hour men are rolling into ditches of death because they do not learn how to live. These ditches have fictitious names—grief, fright, apoplexy, heart disease, kidney troubles, etc., etc.—but the true name is chronic self-abuse.
Says an agricultural journal: “The eggs of most fowls are infertile from too much pampering and too little exercise. It is not wise to fatten any animal intended for breeding purposes.” The principle here involved does not relate simply to the fertility of the ovum, but to the health and stamina of all living creatures: fat is disease. Very fat women can not conceive, or, if they do, their children can not be born alive; and those who are to any degree degenerated in this manner can not endow their offspring with the full measure of vitality to which they are justly entitled; while too often they are foredoomed to sickly lives and premature deaths.
I can in no way better illustrate the relation of fat
to health and strength, than by repeating the remarks of an intelligent and observing young farmer. “I fatten my cattle,” said he, “because it pays—the market demands fat creatures; so I have my barn very snug and warm, and feed high. My neighbor, on the other hand, is what would be called a ‘poor farmer’; that is, his buildings are not of the best, his barn has broad cracks all around, which gives them pure air, and his cattle are never fat. He works his oxen hard, gives them enough to eat to keep them in full health and vigor, but nothing for adipose. Mornings, in winter, when he turns his oxen out into the yard, they prance out like a lot of colts, kick up their heels and shake their horns like healthy creatures as they are; while mine will almost tumble down over the door-sill! His cows never give as much milk nor make as much butter as mine; but they are never sick, while mine are sometimes, and I lose one now and then with ‘milk-fever,’ or some other disease resulting from high feeding; but I am farming for profit, and my heifers bring an extra price by reason of the great milk and butter record of their mothers, and I can afford to have a sick or even a dead cow occasionally, providing I keep the fact quiet—not advertise the danger of the process necessary to ‘drive the milk out of them.’”
[Obesity being a disease peculiar to, and (terminating in cholera infantum or some zymotic disease) especially fatal in, infancy, the author has endeavored to treat the subject exhaustively in his work entitled “How to Feed the Baby.” He would merely observe,