We must admit, however, that it would be a grave error to assert that all persons suffering under an excess of fat are invariably wanting in the finer feelings, or even in moral energy. There are many living proofs to the contrary. But it is among women chiefly that we witness instances of great mental refinement and susceptibility, in union with a body steadily increasing to a lamentable size.
Moralists have written that obesity is a sign of egotism; of a good stomach, but of a bad heart; and many may be found to endorse the sentiment. Unhappily people are easily dazzled with high sounding words, and the sententious phrases of moralists. This is wrong; for if we take the trouble to adopt for a moment the opposite to that which they advance, we shall often find that this opposite is not void of reason. In support of this remark many reasons can be advanced why a fat person should have a good heart, and be endowed with most excellent qualities. Corpulence, it is true, usually indicates good digestive powers; but good digestion is not incompatible with goodness of heart. One who digests his food easily ought to be better disposed towards those around him, than the sickly creature labouring under dyspepsia. What amount of temper can be expected in those who daily experience pain in the stomach while the digestive process is going on? they can have no joyousness of heart, but must continually be in bad humour, too often seen in their contracted and jaundiced features. It is a great mental effort on their part to receive you with even a seeming cordiality. We may always accost a person with a degree of confidence, whose skin is gracefully spread over a sufficient layer of fat. I may be mistaken, but in my opinion we need not expect to meet in such persons great mental anxiety, or intense egotistical feelings.
Julius Cæsar was warned a few days before his assassination that an attempt would be made upon his life:—Antonius and Dolabella were accused of being the conspirators. "I have but little dread of those two men," said he, "they are too fat, and pay too much attention to their toilette; I should rather fear Brutus and Cassius, who are meagre and pale-faced." The end justified Cæsar's opinion.
With respect to lean persons, I shall not undertake to oppose the general opinion that a delicate organization is emblematic of a mind endowed with a great member of most precious and good qualities, frequently used with such energy, as by its very strength to be the cause of bodily weakness. But let us beware of entering the domain of Lavater, Gall and Spurzheim. We would rather say that the emblem of health is a sufficient but not too great rotundity of person—mens sana in corpore sano.
CHAPTER II.
Sterility must be numbered among the infirmities induced by excessive corpulence. This is a well attested fact in reference to the human species, and also as to the females of the lower animals. One of the professors in the Medical Faculty of Paris, while explaining in his lectures how fat could interfere with conception, never failed to cite the practice of the peasantry, who hastened to send to market those hens which became excessively fat, because they then ceased to lay eggs. Even plants lose their fertility by excess of fat. A plant growing in a cultivated soil where it finds a superabundance of food becomes sterile, because the stamens are transformed into petals, causing double flowers.
The rule is, in order that a woman should be capable of conception, that she should be regular—that is to say, that she should lose each month a certain quantity of blood. Now it is asserted by medical men that, in general, those women who are thin, and who are almost without exception fertile, lose much more blood than fat women. Menstruation lasts with them from five to ten days, whilst fat women lose but very little blood during two or three days at the most. It may be added that in the first of these three days the loss is considerable, the second day there is scarcely any, and on the third day there is more, but it then ceases.
Just in proportion as a thin woman becomes fat, her menstrual flow diminishes, and so much the more speedily, the quicker she becomes fat. Some women who have thus increased in fat have ceased to menstruate at thirty-five, at twenty-five, and even at twenty years of age. Some young girls, regular at twelve or fourteen years of age, on becoming fat, have ceased to menstruate and become chlorotic.