Even though no such dire fate overtakes one, the penalties of excessive proteid consumption are found in many ills, for which perhaps the victim seeks in vain a logical explanation; gastro-intestinal disturbance, indigestion, intestinal toxæmia, liver troubles, bilious attacks, gout, rheumatism, to say nothing of many other ailments, some more and some less serious, are associated with the habitual overeating of proteid food. But excessive food consumption is by no means confined to the proteid foodstuffs; general overfeeding is a widespread evil, the marks of which are to be detected on all sides, and in no uncertain fashion. One of the most common signs of excessive food consumption is the tendency toward obesity, a condition which is distinctly undesirable and may prove decidedly injurious. Undue accumulation of fat is not only a mechanical obstacle to the proper activity of the body as a whole, but it interferes with the freedom of movement of such muscular organs as the heart and stomach, thereby interposing obstacles to the normal action of these structures. Further, whenever undue fat formation is going on in the body, there is the ever present danger that the lifeless fat may replace the living protoplasm of the tissue cells and so give rise to a condition known as “fatty degeneration.” While a superabundance of fat in the body is a sure telltale of overeating, the absence of obesity is by no means an indication that excess of food is being avoided. There is here, in man as in animal kind, much idiosyncrasy; some persons, especially those endowed with a long and large frame, tend to keep thin even though they eat excessively, while others grow fat much more readily. As a well-known physician has expressed it, “In the one case, the subject burns, instantly and mercilessly, every stick of fuel delivered at his door, whether or not he needs the resulting hot fire roaring within, while the other, miser-like, hoards the rest in vast piles, filling the house from cellar to garret.”