A common result of faulty digestion is a tendency to grow fat. Just as extreme thinness results from failure to digest food properly and so get the nourishment out of it, so a certain kind of obesity is likewise a wrong digestion of food; and though the symptom of “laying on flesh” is often ignorantly considered a sign of health, it may be distinctly a sign of bad digestion, if the flesh that is laid on is fatty. Certain foods, such as sugar and oil, are in themselves fattening; so, also, is starchy food, even if not properly masticated. An avoidance of excess of liquid is a good precaution against obesity, if under that word we class abnormal weight; so also is the habit of making the skin act properly by baths and exercises; so, too, are exercises for the abdomen, which facilitate the processes of digestion (though these exercises should not be employed when the digestion is at work--_i.e._, just after meals). And everyone should remember that it is far easier to avoid getting fat, than to stop the process of accumulation of fat when once it has set in. Prevention here is not only better, but easier than cure. By a strange perversity of nature, fat people have often a craving for fattening foods. But this must obviously not be taken as a healthy instinct; it is an instinct of a diseased condition. Another common enemy of health is constipation, and it is an enemy mainly because waste material, which should be ejected, is retained in the body, and during its retention necessarily disperses a certain amount of poisonous gases and substances through the body. But it is a question whether the drugs which many people are accustomed to take almost daily with a view to its prevention or cure are not as bad in their effects. And the sad thing is that an enormous amount of such constipation could be cured by perfectly simple and natural means. Diet is largely responsible for it; so, too, is the lack of exercises which facilitate the movements of the bowels. People who suffer from it should be sparing in their use of stimulants, especially of those which have a large percentage of alcohol, and in their use of white flour, and of flesh foods, the place of which should be taken by other foods, such as brown bread, tomatoes and fruit, fresh if possible, or stewed. These are without doubt the best preventives, and also the best remedies. Above all things it is most injurious to get in the habit of relieving constipation by doses of salts, or of other medicines even less innocent. The sort of diet which both prevents and alleviates it is a natural remedy, as also are the bending and leg-raising exercises which help the action of the bowels. They are worth trying.