constant use but probably need to change continually. The steady or
rapid lessening of the deposits of hydro-carbons stored away in the
areolæ of the tissues is of importance, as indicating their excessive
use or a failure of supply; and when either condition is to be suspected
it becomes our duty to learn the reasons for this striking symptom. Loss
of flesh has also a collateral value of great import, because it is
almost an invariable rule that rapid thinning is accompanied soon or
late with more or less anæmia, and it is uncommon to see a person
steadily gaining fat after any pathological reduction of weight without
a corresponding gain in amount and quality of blood. We too rarely
reflect that the blood thins with the decrease of the tissues and
enriches as they increase.

Before entering into this question further, I shall ask attention to
some points connected with the normal fat of the human body; and, taking
for granted, here and elsewhere, that my readers are well enough aware
of the physiological value and uses of the adipose tissues, I shall
continue to look at the matter chiefly from a clinical point of view.

When in any individual the weight varies rapidly or slowly, it is nearly
always due, for the most part, to a change in the amount of adipose
tissue stored away in the meshes of the areolar tissue. Almost any grave
change for the worse in health is at once betrayed in most people by a
diminution of fat, and this is readily seen in the altered forms of the
face, which, because it is the always visible and in outline the most
irregular part of the body, shows first and most plainly the loss or
gain of tissue. Fatty matter is therefore that constituent of the body
which goes and comes most easily. Why there is in nearly every one a
normal limit to its accumulation we cannot say, nor yet why this limit
should vary as life goes on. Even in health the weight of men, and still