Fat and Blood | Page 4

flesh, and in a larger number
enormous falling away, and its cessation as speedy a renewal of fat. I
have also found that in many women who are not perfectly well there is
a notable loss of weight at every menstrual period, and a marked gain
between these times.
I was disappointed not to find this matter dealt with fully in Mrs.
Jacobi's able essay on menstruation, nor can I discover elsewhere any
observations in regard to loss or gain of weight at menstrual periods in
the healthy woman.
How much influence the seasons have, is not as yet well understood,
but in our own climate, with its great extremes, there are some
interesting facts in this connection. The upper classes are with us in
summer placed in the best conditions for increase in flesh, not only
because it is their season of least work, mental and physical, but also
because they are then for the most part living in the country under

circumstances favorable to appetite, to exercise, and to freedom from
care. Owing to these fortunate facts, members of the class in question
are apt to gain weight in summer, although many such persons, as I
know, follow the more general rule and lose weight. But if we deal
with the mass of men who are hard worked, physically, and unable to
leave the towns, we shall probably find that they nearly always lose
weight in hot weather. Some support is given to this idea by the
following very curious facts. Very many years ago I was engaged for
certain purposes in determining the weight, height, and girth of all the
members of our city police force. The examination was made in April
and repeated in the beginning of October. Every care was taken to
avoid errors, but to my surprise I found that a large majority of the men
had lost weight during the summer. The sum total of loss was
enormous. As I have mislaid some of the sheets, I am unable to give it
accurately, but I found that three out of every five had lessened in
weight. It would be interesting to know if such a change occurs in
convicts confined in penitentiaries.
I am acquainted with some persons who lose weight in winter, and with
more who fail in flesh in the spring, which is our season of greatest
depression in health,--the season when with us choreas are apt to
originate[5] or to recur, and when habitual epileptic fits become more
frequent in such as are the victims of that disease.
Climate has a good deal to do with a tendency to take on fat, and I
think the first thing which strikes an American in England is the
number of inordinately fat middle-aged people, and especially of fat
women.
This excess of flesh we usually associate in idea with slothfulness, but
English women exercise more than ours, and live in a land where few
days forbid it, so that probably such a tendency to obesity is due chiefly
to climatic causes. To these latter also we may no doubt ascribe the
habits of the English as to food. They are larger feeders than we, and
both sexes consume strong beer in a manner which would in this
country be destructive of health. These habits aid, I suspect, in
producing the more general fatness in middle and later life, and those

enormous occasional growths which so amaze an American when first
he sets foot in London. But, whatever be the cause, it is probable that
members of the prosperous classes of English, over forty, would
outweigh the average American of equal height of that period, and this
must make, I should think, some difference in their relative liability to
certain forms of disease, because the overweight of our trans-Atlantic
cousins is plainly due to excess of fat.
I have sought in vain for English tables giving the weight of men and
women of various heights at like ages. The material for such a study of
men in America is given in Gould's researches published by the United
States Sanitary Commission, and in Baxter's admirable report,[6] but is
lacking for women. A comparison of these points as between English
and Americans of both sexes would be of great interest.
I doubt whether in this country as notable a growth in bulk as
multitudes of English attain would be either healthy or desirable in
point of comfort, owing to the distress which stout people feel in our
hot summer weather. Certainly "Banting" is with us a rarely-needed
process, and, as a rule, we have much more frequent occasion to fatten
than to thin our patients. The climatic peculiarities which have changed
our voices, sharpened our features, and made small the American hand
and foot, have also made