HUMAN FATNESS

Hokitika Guardian, 28 January 1932, Page 8

HUMAN FATNESS

ATAVISTIC TENDENCI ES. LONDON, January Id. Obesity is the most decided example of degenerative atavism, said Dr. Leonard Williams, and authority on human fatness and the stages oi lily, in a lecture on man's atavistic tendencies. The fat man, lie said, was imitating the hibernating habits ol his animal ancestors and accumulating vast st -ore s of internal provisions—a sub-conscious preparation for the winter’s fast, which never arrived. Dr Williams attributed man’s sense of beauty, and especially of female beauty, to his transcendental brain, and his ability to speak, to his decision to walk on two legs. If he had remained a quadruped, he would not have developed that central nervous system which is the seat of such god-like qualities as lie might justly claim to possess. So much vital energy was necessary to make the negro black that lie had not much left to develop his central nervous system. This accounted for the dark races’ childlike character. Dr, Williams attributed the post-war tendency, to effeminacy in men to a revulsion from everything male.