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.
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