Obesity, or Excessive Corpulence: The Various Causes and the Rational Means of CureDancel, J.-F. (Jean-François)
Science
Obesity, or Excessive Corpulence: The Various Causes and the Rational Means of Cure
Dancel, J.-F. (Jean-François)
Obesity; Weight loss
"6th July.--Your predictions have been verified. I am now in excellent
health, and no longer suffer from the great oppression to which I
was formerly subject during hot weather. Your medicine, according to
my experience, is everything that can be desired; but I have been a
sufferer for the last thirty years, and it will take some time to
effect a perfect cure. I have not perceptibly diminished in size, but
am sensible of a peculiar freedom of motion of the internal organs. My
husband also intends shortly to put your system in practice."
On the 11th August, this lady wrote again, to say that she was still
pursuing the treatment; that she had not weighed herself, but was then
several inches less in circumference than before.
The treatment was continued, and she became thin. Her husband
subsequently adopted the system for a month, and derived great
advantage from it. I cannot say how much his weight was diminished;
but his great desire was to get rid of an unsightly cushion of fat,
situated upon the back of his neck. I learn from Madame d'Hervilly that
this unmilitary-like appendage has disappeared.
On the 7th August, 1852, M. Alcide Desbouillons wrote to me from Brest,
to the effect that his corpulence was a source of great inconvenience;
that his duties required him to be much on horseback, and consequently
in hot weather he suffered greatly from fatigue. He weighed two
hundred pounds, and measured forty-nine inches in circumference. On
the 2nd September, after twenty days' trial of my system, and, as he
says, perhaps not as rigorously carried out as it should have been,
he weighed himself again, and obtained the following result: Weight,
one hundred and eighty-nine pounds: circumference, forty-five inches.
Twenty days after this he weighed one hundred and eighty-seven pounds,
and measured forty-three inches in circumference. This was but a slight
difference; yet M. Desbouillons, after the first few days of treatment,
could walk with less difficulty, was more active, and was no longer
bathed in perspiration. In his last letter he says, "I am continuing
your plan of treatment, and expect to find a notable amelioration both
in size and weight. The effects produced by your medicine have been
in perfect accord with what you had led me to expect. The experiment
appears so far conclusive, and I trust that my case will prove
thoroughly demonstrative."
If free from prejudice, and willing to acknowledge the truth of that
which is manifest, the cases we have just cited ought to satisfy
any candid enquirer that obesity may be entirely overcome without
prejudicially affecting the general health. At first sight, this would
appear undeniable; yet medical writers, who have hitherto insisted that
a meat diet is conducive to the development of fat, and that vegetables
have an opposite tendency, will not frankly acknowledge their error.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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