Letter on corpulence : addressed to the public / by William Banting.

  • Banting, William, 1797-1878.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter on corpulence : addressed to the public / by William Banting. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    I will now shortly allude to the second principle which, as you know, requires that the supply of new materials of combustion should be withheld, until the accumulated fat in the body has been consumed. It cannot be positively stated, that this principle, although its correctness is generally acknowledged, has yet received m practice the attention which it deserves. In order precisely to carry out its principles, it would seem to be necessary to reduce, as much as possible, the supply of all those means of respiration which I have already mentioned, such as fat, sugar, starch, vege- table gum, and those substances, which during the process of diges- tion are converted into sugar. It is true that more than 1,800 years ago, on purely empiric grounds, Celsus recommended to thin persons pinguia et dulcia, i.e., fat and sweet aliments, and forbade the same to corpulent persons. This maxim of the old Homan savant, has by no means been overlooked. Gerhard Van Swieten, who in the last century was summoned by the Empress Maria Theresa from Leyden to Vienna, and who transferred tlie splendour of that Dutch University to the Imperial metropolis, expressly mentions this dictum of Celsus in his celebrated commentaries on the aphorisms of his great teacher, Boerhaave; and Van Swieten endeavoured to explain it upon the then known scientific principles, and to account for the fact, that the use of vegetable aliments has a tendency to produce fat. He maintains that there must be a great amotmt of secreted fat in vegetable food: for cows, which feed only on hay and water, are able to produce such a fatty substance as milk, and when the secretion of milk ceases, they have a tendency to become immode- rately fat from the same nourishment. One would think that this simple and evident fact which Van Swieten quotes, would have suggested to all thinking medical men the prohibition of the immo- derate use of bread and potatoes, as well as of fat, to corpulent persons. At any rate, when Liebig's discoveries of the laws of nourishment, and the production of fat became known to every scientific man, one would be inclined to think, that rich aliments containing starch and sugar would have been generally forbidden in the treatment of corpulence. But it is not so. Although reasoning upon sound principles, thin persons were recommended to take a plentiful supply of fat, and also of other means of respiration, such as soups, chocolate, sweet grapes, extract of malt, and strong malt liquors, yet, until lately, it was thought sufficient in order to obtain the reverse efiect, i.e., to make persons thin, merely to forbid the use of fat—and not to recommend I 2