In some diseases, such as diabetes or Bright's disease, in very high fever, with profuse diarrhea, and with difficulty in the elimination of carbon dioxide in the lungs - such as occurs in pneumonia and heart disease - acidosis may be so severe as to represent one of the main factors in the cause of death.

In its advance into the unknown, scientific medicine has taken advantage of the work of the chemist for determining exactly the condition of the human body. The technical methods are extremely intricate and can be performed only by those who have had special training. They reveal definitely the exact extent of the acidosis from which the patient may be suffering and indicate also the nature of the treatment that must be used to overcome the condition.

Obviously, when acidosis occurs in diabetes or in Bright's disease, attention must be directed to improve the work of the organs that are weak, namely, the pancreas and the kidney. The work of the pancreas is improved by giving insulin and by changing the diet. The work of the kidney is improved by the use of sweat baths which eliminate materials through the skin and by a change in diet so as to throw less stress on the kidney.

In every one of the conditions in which acidosis develops, attention must be given to the water exchange, and it must be seen that the patient has a sufficient amount of water to take care of all of the factors that have been mentioned in the discussion of water.

There exists also the possibility of correcting the acid state to some extent by the use of foods that tend more toward the alkaline side. There are many foods which have value for this purpose. They include particularly peas, oranges, potatoes, peaches, cantaloupes, celery, carrots, beets, and lima beans. There are other foods which tend particularly toward the production of acid. Among them are bread, eggs, meats, oysters, oatmeal, and rice.

If severe acidosis is present, the person must be kept absolutely at rest, and care must be taken to see that he is kept warm.

The opposite condition to acidosis is alkalosis. This occurs rarely and usually because the person has been taking too much alkali or too much baking soda or bicarbonate of soda to overcome what he thinks is an acid condition. Many people who suffer occasionally from ulcers of the stomach or from hyperacidity, take immense quantities of soda for the correction of the condition. Obviously, alkalosis can easily be controlled by cutting down on the amount of alkalis being taken, both in the form of drugs and foods.

When alkalosis is due to excessive breathing, such as occasionally occurs in hysteria and other diseases, the patient may be given air to breathe which contains an abnormally large amount of carbon dioxide until the system is brought under control.

The Body Weight. It might seem, from all of the discussion and disturbance that has taken place in recent years on the subject of overweight, that all of the problems of overweight have been fully settled by the investigators of medical science. There are, however, still many unsolved problems which disturb the physiologist as well as the clinician.

It has been argued that overweight is merely the result of bad psychological bookkeeping; in other words, that overweight is practically always due to overeating and that it nearly always can be controlled by proper diet. The majority of medical opinion to-day is against that point of view.

Obesity, or overweight, is usually due to an accumulation of large amounts of fat distributed in the places where fat is usually distributed, but particularly in the abdominal wall, so that the obese person develops the appearance indicating that"coming events cast their shadows before." Women normally have a little more fat under the skin than do men.

As a rule, the average person maintains for approximately ten years a certain weight, which varies hardly a pound from any one year to another. Obviously, there is in the human body a regulating mechanism for balancing the intake and output so that the weight will remain fairly constant.

If a person over-exercises, he eats more; if he takes less exercise, he feels less need for food and eats less. This is largely automatic. As one advances toward middle age, he begins to add a little to the store of body fat, at thirty-five years weighing approximately ten pounds more than at twenty-five, and at fifty, ten or twenty pounds more than at thirty-five. This takes place so regularly that it is consented to be normal. It is probably due to lessened activity, a lowered activity particularly of the glands, and perhaps to a more quiet life in every possible way.

There are people, however, who gain much more weight than has been described as the normal gain. There are some families which tend to be fat. Just as there are animals thin and fat, large and small, so also there are human beings of various shapes and sizes, owing to the heredity of the family and to racial type. A German woman tends to be fat, and a Japanese woman to be thin.

In the disease condition called obesity, the human being stores up surplus material taken in the form of food instead of eliminating it so as to maintain the body weight at normal for the particular age and height. People who eat too much, exercise too little, and who eat particularly large amounts of rich foods are bound to put on weight. Children in such families acquire the bad habits from their parents, and the tendency to overweight becomes established. People in desk jobs tend to overweight. Owing to constant pressure on the regulating mechanism, it may break down after a certain amount of time and thus establish a vicious circle. There is a considerable number of people whose glands are disordered in some fashion as to interfere greatly with their regulation of body weight.