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

  • William Banting
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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    QUALITY alone wliich requires notice, and not quantity. This has been emphatically denied by some writers in the public papers, but I can confidently assert, upon the indisputable evidence of many of my correspondents, as well as my own, that they are mistaken. I apprehend that people of larger frame and build may require a proportionately larger quantity of the prescribed diet, but they must be guided by their own judgment m the application of the principles laid down. It was probably my misfortune, never to have heard of a celebrated work, La Plujsiologie du Gout, by Brillat Savarin, and other treatises by Bernard and Dancel; but I had full confidence that our own eminent medical men (second to none in Em'ope) were well informed of every new scientific fact discovered m Paris or elsewhere, and I never dreamed of consulting those foreign authorities, from whom, as the public press has since informed me, I might have obtained a remedy for the cure of Corpulence. My unpretending letter on Corpulence has at least brought all these facts to the surface for public exammation, and they have thereby had already a great share of atten- tion, and will doubtless receive much more until tlie system is thoroughly understood and properly appreciated by every thinking man and woman in the civilized world. I have been told, again and again, that the system was as old as the hills. I will not deny it, because I cannot; but I can say for myself and my many correspondents, that it was quite new to us; or some of us would doubtless have been recommended to practise it by medical advisers, as I have no doubt they are now, and as they surely will be here- after more extensively. Some writers have assumed that I had no great grievance in my corpulent state. Are failing sight and hearing, an umbilical rupture requiring a truss, bandages for weak knees and ankles, not serious grievances ? Those only who have suffered from corpulence can adequately understand its
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