“My patient, Mr. Banting, having published for the benefit of his
fellow sufferers, some account of the diet which I recommended him to
adopt with a view to relieve him of a distressing degree of hypertrophy
of the adipose tissue. I have been frequently urged by him to explain
the principles upon which I was enabled to treat with success this
inconvenient, and in some instances, distressing condition of the
system.
“The simple history of my finding occasion to investigate this
subject is as follows:--When in Paris, in the year 1856, I took the
opportunity of attending a discussion on the views of M. Bernard, who
was at that time propounding his now generally admitted theory of
the liver functions. After he had discovered by chemical processes
and physiological experiments, which it is unnecessary for me to
recapitulate here, that the liver not only secreted bile, but also a
peculiar amyloid or starch-like product which he called glucose, and
which in its chemical and physical properties appeared to be nearly
allied to saccharine matter, he further found that this glucose could
be directly produced in the liver by the ingestion of sugar and its
ally starch, and that in diabetes it existed there in considerable
excess. It had long been well known that a purely animal diet greatly
assisted in checking the secretion of diabetic urine; and it seemed
to follow, as a matter of course, that the total abstinence from
saccharine and farinaceous matter must drain the liver of this
excessive amount of glucose, and thus arrest in a similar proportion
the diabetic tendency. Reflecting on this chain of argument, and
knowing too that a saccharine and farinaceous diet is used to fatten
certain animals, and that in diabetes, the whole of the fat of the body
rapidly disappears, it occurred to me that excessive obesity might be
allied to diabetes as to its cause, although widely diverse in its
development: and that if a purely animal diet was useful in the latter
disease, a combination of animal food with such vegetable matters as
contained neither sugar nor starch, might serve to arrest the undue
formation of fat. I soon afterwards had an opportunity of testing this
idea. A dispensary patient, who consulted me for deafness, and who was
enormously corpulent, I found to have no distinguishable disease of
the ear. I therefore suspected that his deafness arose from the great
development of adipose matter in the throat, pressing upon and stopping
up the eustachian tubes. I subjected him to a strict non-farinaceous
and non-saccharine diet, and treated him with the volatile alkali
alluded to in his Pamphlet, and occasional aperients, and in about
seven months he was reduced to almost normal proportions, his hearing
restored, and his general health immensely improved. This case seemed
to give substance and reality to my conjectures, which further
experience has confirmed.
“When we consider that fat is what is termed hydro carbon, and deposits
itself so insidiously and yet so gradually amongst the tissues of
the body, it is at once manifest that we require such substances as
contain a superfluity of oxygen and nitrogen to arrest its formation
and to vitalize the system. That is the principal upon which the
diet suggested in his Pamphlet works, and explains on the one hand
the necessity of abstaining from all vegetable roots which hold a
large quantity of saccharine matter, and on the other the beneficial
effects derivable from those vegetables, the fruits of which are on the
exterior of the earth, as they lose, probably by means of the sun’s
action, a large proportion of their sugar.
“With regard to the tables of Dr. Hutchinson, referred to in his
Pamphlet, it is no doubt difficult, as he says, to determine what is a
man’s proper weight, which must be influenced by various causes. Those
tables, however, were formed by him on the principle of considering
the amount of air which the lungs in their healthy state can receive
and apply to the oxydation of the blood. I gave them to Mr. Banting
as an indication only of what the approximate weight of adult persons
in proportion to their stature should be, and with the view of
proving to them the importance of keeping down the tendency to grow
fat; for, as that tendency increases, the capacity of the lungs, and
consequently the vitality and power of the whole system must diminish.
In conclusion, I would suggest the propriety of advising a dietary such
as this in diseases that are in any way influenced by a disordered
condition of the hepatic functions, as they cannot fail to yield in
some degree to this simple method of treatment if fairly and properly
carried out; it remains for me to watch its progress in a more limited
sphere.
“WILLIAM HARVEY, F.R.C.S.,
“Surgeon to the Royal Dispensary,
for Diseases of the Ear.”
_2, Soho Square_,
_April, 1864_.