Lastly, there is the class of fat anaemic people, usually women. This
double peculiarity is rather uncommon, but, as the mass of thin-blooded
persons are as a rule thin or losing flesh, there must be something
unusual in that anaemia which goes with gain in flesh.
Bauer[8] thinks that lessened number of blood-corpuscles gives rise to
storing of fat, owing to lessened tissue-combustion. At all events, the
absorption of oxygen diminishes after bleeding, and it used to be well
known that some people grew fat when bled at intervals. Also, it is said
that cattle-breeders in some localities--certainly not in this
country--bleed their cattle to cause increase of fat in the tissues, or
of fat secreted as butter in the milk. These explanations aid us but
little to comprehend what, after all, is only met with in certain
persons, and must therefore involve conditions not common to every one
who is anaemic. Meanwhile, the group of fat anaemics is of the utmost
clinical interest, as I shall by and by point out more distinctly.
There is a popular idea, which has probably passed from the
agriculturist into the common mind of the community, to the effect that
human fat varies,--that some fat is wholesome and some unwholesome, that
there are good fats and bad fats.
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