So the man you call "fat and husky" is fat but not husky, according to the statistics.
Fat Men and Influenza
¶ During the historic Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 more fat people succumbed than all other types combined. This fact was a source of surprise and much discussion on the part of newspapers, but not of the scientists. The big question in treating this disease and its twin, Pneumonia, is: will the heart hold out? Fat seriously handicaps the heart.
The Fat Man's Ford Engine
¶ The human heart weighs less than a pound but it is the one organ in all our machinery that never takes a rest. It is the engine of the human car, and what a faithful little motor too—like the Ford engine which it so much resembles. If you live to be forty it chugs away forty years, and if you stay here ninety it stretches it to ninety, without an instant of vacation.
But it must be treated with consideration and the first consideration is not to overwork it. A Ford engine is large enough for a Ford car, for Fords are light weight. As long as you do not weigh too much your engine will carry you up the hills and down the dales of life with good old Ford efficiency and at a pretty good gait.
Making a Truck out of Your Ford
¶ But when you take on fat you are doing to your engine what a Ford driver would be doing to his if he loaded his car with brick or scrap iron.
A Ford owner who intended to transport bricks the rest of his life could get a big-cylinder engine and substitute it for the original but you can't do that. This little four-cylinder affair is the only one you will ever have and no amount of money, position or affection can buy you a new one if you mistreat it. Like the Ford engine, it will stand for a good many pounds of excess baggage and still do good work. But if you load on too much and keep it there the day will come when its cylinders begin to skip.
¶ You may take it to the service station and pay the doctors to grind the valves, fix your carbureter and put in some new spark plugs. These may work pretty well as long as you are traveling the paved highway of Perfect Health; you may keep up with the procession without noticing anything particularly wrong.