Very many years ago I was engaged for certain purposes in determining the weight, height, and girth of all the members of our city police force.
The examination was made in April and repeated in the beginning of October.

Every care was taken to avoid errors, but to my surprise I found that a large majority of the men had lost weight during the summer.

The sum total of loss was enormous.

As I have mislaid some of the sheets, I am unable to give it accurately, but I found that three out of every five had lessened in weight.

It would be interesting to know if such a change occurs in convicts confined in penitentiaries.
I am acquainted with some persons who lose weight in winter, and with more who fail in flesh in the spring, which is our season of greatest depression in health,--the season when with us choreas are apt to originate[5] or to recur, and when habitual epileptic fits become more frequent in such as are the victims of that disease.
Climate has a good deal to do with a tendency to take on fat, and I think the first thing which strikes an American in England is the number of inordinately fat middle-aged people, and especially of fat women.
This excess of flesh we usually associate in idea with slothfulness, but English women exercise more than ours, and live in a land where few days forbid it, so that probably such a tendency to obesity is due chiefly to climatic causes.