According to Ebstein, the Moorish women reach with astonishing rapidity the desired embonpoint on a diet of dates and a peculiar kind of meal.
In some nations and families obesity is hereditary, and generations come and go without a change in the ordinary conformation of the representatives.

In other people slenderness is equally persistent, and efforts to overcome this peculiarity of nature are without avail.
Treatment of Obesity .-- Many persons, the most famous of whom was Banting, have advanced theories to reduce corpulency and to improve slenderness; but they have been uniformly unreliable, and the whole subject of stature-development presents an almost unexplored field for investigation.

Recently, Leichtenstein, observing in a case of myxedema treated with the thyroid gland that the subcutaneous fat disappeared with the continuance of the treatment, was led to adopt this treatment for obesity itself and reports striking results.

The diet of the patient remained the same, and as the appetite was not diminished by the treatment the loss of weight was evidently due to other causes than altered alimentation.

He holds that the observations in myxedema, in obesity, and psoriasis warrant the belief that the thyroid gland eliminates a material having a regulating influence upon the constitution of the panniculus adiposus and upon the nutrition of the skin in general.