It is by no means true that increase of the tissues in bulk and density is always a sign of improved health. We are accustomed to congratulate each other upon looking plump and rosy. But too much rosiness may be a symptom of ill-health; and, similarly with plumpness, there is a point beyond which obesity is a mere weariness to the spirit. Nor does a person need to become as rotund as Wouter Van Twiller in order to reach and pass this point. Many persons, who are not actually corpulent, would lose weight if their nutrition could be improved. And the explanation is quite simple. Normal nutrition is not merely the repair of tissue: it is the repair of all the tissues in the body _in due proportion_. This is a very essential qualification. Fibrous and areolar tissue, muscle, nerve, and fat are daily and hourly wasting in various degrees; and the repair, whether great or small, must be nicely proportioned to the waste in each tissue. If a pound is added to the weight of the body, it makes all the difference in the world whether one ounce is muscle, another ounce nerve, a third ounce fat, and so on, or whether the whole pound is fat. When one tissue gets more than its fair share, the chances are that all the others must go a-begging. The co-ordinating, controlling power of the organism over its several parts is diminished,--which is the same as saying that nutrition is impaired. Evidence of this soon appears in the circumstance that the deposit of adipose tissue is no longer confined to the proper places. Fat begins to accumulate all over the body, in localities where little or no fat is wanted, and notably about the stomach and diaphragm, causing laborious movement of the thorax and wheezing respiration. When a man gets into this state, it is a sign that the ratio between the waste and the repair of his tissues has become seriously dislocated. You can relieve him of his fat only by improving his nutrition. The German who drinks his forty glasses of lager bier _per diem_ is said to be bloated; and we have heard it gravely surmised that the ale, getting into his system, swells him up--as if the human body were a sort of bladder or balloon! The explanation is not quite so simple. But it is easy to see how this immense quantity of liquid, continually loading the stomach and intestines, and entailing extra labour upon all the excreting organs, should so damage the assimilative powers as to occasion an excessive deposit of coarse fat and of flabby, imperfectly-elaborated connective tissue, over the entire surface of the body. And the state of chronic, though mild, narcosis in which the guzzler keeps himself, by still further injuring his reparative powers, contributes to the general result. There are consequently four ways in which tobacco may exhibit its effects upon the nutrition of the body. I. In stimulant doses, by improving nutrition, it may increase the normal weight.