by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
Available in 98 free installments
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The Alimentive eats his way to the grave and has at least this much to say for it: it is more delightful than the pet weaknesses by which the other types hasten the final curtain.
¶ Diabetes is more common among this type than any other. Apoplexy comes next, especially if the fat man is also a florid man with a fast heart or an inclination to high blood pressure. A sudden breaking down of any or several of the vital organs is also likely to occur to fat people earlier than to others. It is the price they pay for their years of over-eating.
¶ Overtaxed heart, kidneys and liver are inevitable results of too much food.
So the man you call "fat and husky" is fat but not husky, according to the statistics.
¶ During the historic Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 more fat people succumbed than all other types combined. This fact was a source of surprise and much discussion on the part of newspapers, but not of the scientists. The big question in treating this disease and its twin, Pneumonia, is: will the heart hold out? Fat seriously handicaps the heart.
¶ The human heart weighs less than a pound but it is the one organ in all our machinery that never takes a rest. It is the engine of the human car, and what a faithful little motor too?like the Ford engine which it so much resembles. If you live to be forty it chugs away forty years, and if you stay here ninety it stretches it to ninety, without an instant of vacation.
But it must be treated with consideration and the first consideration is not to overwork it. A Ford engine is large enough for a Ford car, for Fords are light weight. As long as you do not weigh too much your engine will carry you up the hills and down the dales of life with good old Ford efficiency and at a pretty good gait.
¶ But when you take on fat you are doing to your engine what a Ford driver would be doing to his if he loaded his car with brick or scrap iron.
A Ford owner who intended to transport bricks the rest of his life could get a big-cylinder engine and substitute it for the original but you can't do that. This little four-cylinder affair is the only one you will ever have and no amount of money, position or affection can buy you a new one if you mistreat it. Like the Ford engine, it will stand for a good many pounds of excess baggage and still do good work. But if you load on too much and keep it there the day will come when its cylinders begin to skip.
¶ You may take it to the service station and pay the doctors to grind the valves, fix your carbureter and put in some new spark plugs. These may work pretty well as long as you are traveling the paved highway of Perfect Health; you may keep up with the procession without noticing anything particularly wrong.
But come to the hill of Pneumonia or Diabetes and you are very likely not to make the grade.
¶ The records in America show that thousands of men and women literally "kill their engines" every year when they might have lived many years longer.
¶ We live for happiness and each type finds its greatest happiness in following those innate urges determined by the most highly-developed system in its makeup.
The Alimentive's disposition, nature, character and personality are built by and around his alimentary system. He is happiest when gratifying it and whenever he thwarts it he is miserable, just as the rest of us are when we thwart our predominant system.
¶ This type has so many traits needed by the world, however, and has such extreme capacity for enjoying life that the race, not to mention himself, would profit greatly by his denying himself excessive amounts of food.
¶ The good things of life?rich, abundant food and everything that serves the personal appetites?are the cravings of this type.
He purchases and uses more of the limousines, yachts and chefs than any other three types combined, and gets more for his money out of them than others do. The keynote of his nature is personal enjoyment. His senses of touch and taste are also especially acute.
