Victor Hugo,——that grand man who gave us “_Les Miserables_,”——in the first volume of the series, puts this bit of physiological wisdom into the mouth of the witty libertine, Tholomyés, who uses it, to be sure, in a double sense, which I need not here explain: “Now, listen attentively!” says this oracle of the “four.” “Sugar is a salt. Every salt is desiccating. Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts. It sucks up the liquids from the blood through the veins; thence comes the coagulation, then the solidification of the blood; thence the tubercles in the lungs; thence death. And this is why diabetes borders on consumption.” I commend the above thought to consumptives, and to the parents of fat children——the consumptives of the future. Every grain of artificial sugar swallowed, constitutes a tax upon the system——upon the lungs and kidneys, more particularly——a tax upon the individual’s vitality. Among the prolific causes of consumption in after life, is that of the involuntary cramming and fattening of infancy, followed up during childhood and youth by a somewhat less excessive gluttony, which is taught inferentially by the conversation and example of the elders, as by constantly dwelling upon the delights of the palate, arranging entertainments which are feasts of the body, rather than of the mind, in advance of which all classes discuss with excess of interest the palatal pleasures of the coming “good time,” and at which all unite, if not in gorging themselves, at least in feeding themselves for pleasure to the disregard of the true requirements of their bodies for nutriment. As a result of all this, sedentary persons become, like stall-fed oxen, degenerated with fat; and this, as just remarked about children, is a predisposing cause of consumption. A very large proportion of consumptives, most of them, in fact, are first thus diseased; and when any person is round and plump, or even fairly covered, so to say, and is yet lacking in muscular power——“easily tired”——it is _prima facie_ evidence that the muscular system is degenerated in the manner described; and if the muscles, then the vital organs within, also. Thus we observe that grossness is by no means essential to fatty degeneration, although all obese persons are, of course, thus affected. The salary of a fireman (“coal heaver”) depends upon his intelligence in the matter of fuelling up his engine with a view to its “health,” power and longevity; that of the cook or caterer, upon his ingenuity in devising means to accomplish the reverse of all this in the case of the human engine placed at his mercy.