There is, therefore, as Dujardin-Beaumetz asserts, autophagia in the obese, and all these varieties of treatment have but one end, viz.:  Reduction of the daily ration.  But the quantity of nourishment should not be too greatly curtailed, for, manifestly, if the fat disappears the more surely, the muscles (rich in albumen) undergo too rapid modification.  It is progressive action that should always be sought.

The quantity of aliment may be reduced either by imposing an always uniform regimen, which soon begets anorexia and disgust, or by withholding from the food a considerable quantity of fat, or, finally, by forbidding beverage during meals.  Emaciation is obtained readily enough in either way, and demands only the constant exercise of will power on the part of the patient; but unhappily, severe regimen cannot always be prescribed.  When the obese patient has passed the age of forty; when the heart suffers from degeneration; or when the heart is anaemic—­in all, rigorous treatment will serve to still further enfeeble the central organ of circulation, and tend to precipitate accidents that, by all means, are to be avoided.  In such cases, by not treating the obesity, the days of the patient will be prolonged.  In degeneration of the heart, however, the method of Ebstein may be tried; and when there is renal calculi and gouty diathesis, that of Germain See may prove satisfactory.

Paris, France.

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STILT WALKING.

[Illustration:  SYLVAIN DORNON, THE STILT WALKER OF LANDES.]

Sylvain Dornon, the stilt walker of Landes, started from Paris on the 12th of last March for Moscow, and reached the end of his journey at the end of a fifty-eight days’ walk.  This long journey upon stilts constitutes a genuine curiosity, not only to the Russians, to whom this sort of locomotion is unknown, but also to many Frenchmen.

Walking on stilts, in fact, which was common twenty years ago in certain parts of France, is gradually tending to become a thing of the past.  In the wastes of Gascony it was formerly a means of locomotion adapted to the nature of the country.  The waste lands were then great level plains covered with stunted bushes and dry heath.  Moreover, on account of the permeability of the subsoil, all the declivities were transformed into marshes after the slightest fall of rain.

There were no roads of any kind, and the population, relying upon sheep raising for a living, was much scattered.  It was evidently in order to be able to move around under these very peculiar conditions that the shepherds devised and adopted stilts.  The stilts of Landes are called, in the language of the country, tchangues, which signifies “big legs,” and those who use them are called tchangues.