Various are the opinions concerning the cause of excessive corpulence. By
some it is attributed to too great an activity in the digestive functions,
producing a rapid assimilation of our food; by others, to the predominance
of the liver: while indolence and apathy, such as is commonly observed in
the wealthy monastic orders, are considered as occasioning a laxity of
fibre favourable to this _embonpoint_. Boileau has thus described one of
these fat lazy prelates, who
Muni d'un dejeuner,
Dormant d'un leger somme, attendait le diner.
La jeunesse en sa fleur brille sur son visage;
Son menton sur son sein descend a triple etage;
Et son corps ramasse, dans sa courte grosseur,
Fait gemir les coussins sous sa molle epaisseur.
It is certain that exercise, anxiety of mind, want of sleep, and spare
food, are circumstances opposed to fatness. This fact is illustrated by
Shakspeare, when Caesar says to Antony,
Let me have men about me that are fat,--
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights;
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Antony and Dolabella were both men of some corpulence. The Roman ladies
dreaded above all things too voluminous a development of the bosom: to
prevent it they were in the habit of applying to their breasts the raw
flesh of a fish called Angel. Hippocrates has maintained that obesity was
an obstacle to conception. This assertion which was partaken by other
medical writers, may, in some measure account for the dread of
corpulence. Strange indeed have been the fancies on this subject amongst
various nations.
Fat is a fluid similar to vegetable oils, inodorous, and lighter than
water; besides the elements common to water, to oils, and wax, it contains
carbon, hydrogen, and sebacic acid, which is pretty similar to the acetic.
Human fat, like that of other animals, has been frequently employed for
various purposes. A story is told of an Irish tallowchandler, who, during
the invasion of Cromwell's army, made candles with the fat of Englishmen,
which were remarkable for their good quality; but when the times became
more tranquil, his goods were of an inferior kind, and when one of his
customers complained of his candles falling off, he apologised by saying,
"I am sorry to inform you that the times are so bad that I have been short
of Englishmen for a long time."
Obesity may be considered a serious evil, and has exposed corpulent
persons to many _desagremens_. The ancients held fat people in sovereign
contempt. Some of the Gentoos enter their dwellings by a hole in the roof;
and any fat person who cannot get through it, they consider as an
excommunicated offender who has not been able to rid himself of his sins.
An Eastern prince had an officer to regulate the size of his subjects, and
who dieted the unwieldy ones to reduce them to a proper volume. In China
this calamity is considered a blessing, a man's intellectual qualities are
esteemed in the ratio of corporeal bulk.
There are cases on record among ourselves where unwieldiness led to
estimation. The corpulent antiquarian Grose was requested by his butcher
to tell all his friends that he bought his meat from him; and the paviers
of Cambridge used to say, "God bless you, sir!" to a huge professor when
he walked over their work. Fatness has often been the butt of jocularity.
Dr. Stafford, who was enormously fat, was honoured with this epitaph:
Take heed, O good traveller, and do not tread hard,
For here lies Dr. Stafford, _in all this church-yard_.
And the following lines were inscribed on the tomb of a corpulent
chandler:
Here lies in earth an honest fellow,
Who died by fat and lived by tallow.
Dr. Beddoes was so uncomfortably stout that a lady of Clifton used to
call him "the walking feather-bed." At the court of Louis XV. there were
two lusty noblemen, related to each other: the king, having rallied one of
them on his corpulency, added, "I suppose you take little or no exercise?"
"Your majesty will pardon me," replied the bulky duke, "for I generally
walk two or three times round my cousin every morning."
Various ludicrous anecdotes are related of fat people. A scene between
Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, two corpulent actresses, must have been
very amusing. They were playing in the parts of Lady Easy and Edging, in
the Careless Husband, when the former desires Edging to pick up a letter
she had dropped; and Mrs. Clive, who might as well have attempted to raise
a hundred pound weight, exclaimed, "Not I indeed, take it up yourself if
you like it." This answer threw the audience into roars of laughter, when
Mrs. Pritchard replied, "Well, if you won't take up the letter, I must
find some one who will;" and so saying, she beckoned to a servant in the
wing, who came forward and terminated the dispute.
In some countries, especially in the East, moderate obesity is considered
a beauty, and Tunisene young ladies are regularly fattened for marriage; a
different practice from that of the Roman matrons, who starved their
daughters, to make them as lean as possible on such occasions. Thus
Terence,
Nostrae virgines--si bono habitu sunt, matres pugiles esse aiunt, et
cibum deducunt.
Erasmus states that the Gordii carried their admiration for corpulence to
such an extent, that they raised the fattest amongst them to the throne.
It is well known that the preposterous size of some of the Hottentots is
deemed a perfection, and one of their Venuses was not long since exhibited
in London.
There is no doubt that food materially influences this condition of
mankind, although we frequently see enormous eaters who are miserably
lean, and fat persons whose diet is most scanty. During the late war, a
ravenous French prisoner was known to eat four pounds of raw cow-udder,
ten pounds of raw beef, and two pounds of candles, per diem, diluting his
meals with five quarts of porter; yet this carnivorous brute was a perfect
skeleton.
Amongst the many predisposing causes of obesity we may rank emasculation.
An epicurean fishmonger of the name of Samuel Tull performed this
operation on fishes, to render them more delicate. His curious experiments
were submitted to the Royal Society. The same practice has been
subsequently illustrated by Professor Dumeril. Father Charleroix informs
us that Caraib cannibals had recourse to this process to fatten their
prisoners before they were devoured.
Anatomical pursuits are also known to occasion _embonpoint_. This has been
frequently observed amongst medical pupils. Professor Mascagni attributed
his corpulence to his constant attendance on dissections; he also excused
his amorous propensities on similar grounds.
For the cure of corpulency, diminution of food of a nutritious nature has
been generally recommended; added to this, little sleep and much exercise
are advised. Acids to reduce fatness are frequently administered, but have
done considerable mischief. Amongst other wonderful accounts of their
efficacy in such cases, it is related of a Spanish general who was of an
enormous size, that he drank vinegar until his bulk was so reduced that he
could fold his skin round his body.
For a similar purpose soap has been frequently recommended, particularly
by Dr. Flemyng. He began this experiment with one of his patients who
weighed twenty stone and eleven pounds (jockey weight): in July 1754, he
took every night a quarter of an ounce of common Castile soap. In August
1756 his bulk was reduced two stone, and in 1760 he was brought down to a
proper condition.
Darwin is of opinion that salt and salted meat are still more efficacious
than soap. All these experiments, however, are in general not only useless
but pernicious, and frequently prove fatal. Mr. Wadd, from whose curious
work on corpulence much is extracted in this article, properly observes
that, "certain and permanent relief is only to be sought in rigid
abstemiousness, and a strict and constant attention to diet and exercise."
Dr. Cheyne, who weighed thirty-two stone, reduced himself one-third, and
enjoyed good health till the age of seventy-two. Numerous instances of the
kind are mentioned, where journals of gradual reduction were kept: the
following is an abstract of one of them, in the case of a person who, on
the 17th June 1820, weighed twenty-three stone two pounds:--
June 17 23 stone 2 pounds.
July 27 21 " 10 "
September 10 20 " 7 "
October 10 19 " 3 "
November 10 18 " 11 "
December 10 18 " 4 "
December 25 18 " 1 "
In another case, attended by Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh, the patient weighed
twenty-three stone, and by a regular system of diet was brought down to
fifteen stone. In this instance brown bread, with a certain quantity of
bran in it, was employed; and it is well known that the alimentary
secretions are materially altered by the quality of bread. The article of
drink also requires much attention. Corpulent persons generally indulge to
excess, and in this case, every endeavour to reduce them will be vain. We
frequently see our jockeys reducing themselves to the extent of a stone
and a half in the week. A lower scale of diet is by no means as injurious
as it is generally supposed; the English prisoners made by Tippoo Saib,
though kept upon a scanty pittance of bread and water, found themselves in
better health than before, and some of them were cured during their
captivity of liver complaints of long and severe duration.
One of the most corpulent persons known was Mr. Lambert, of
Leicestershire, who weighed fifty-two stone eleven pounds (14 lbs. to the
stone).
At Hainton, there died in 1816, Samuel Sugars, aged fifty-two; and his
body, with a single coffin weighed fifty stone.
In 1754 died Mr. Jacob Powell, of Stebbing in Essex: his body was above
five yards in circumference, and weighed five hundred and sixty pounds;
requiring sixteen men to bear him to his grave.
In 1775 Mr. Spooner, of Skillington near Tamworth, weighed, a short time
before his death, forty stone and nine pounds, and measured four feet
three inches across the shoulders.
Keysler mentions a young man in Lincoln who ate eighteen pounds of beef
daily, and died in 1724, in the twenty-eighth of his age, weighing five
hundred and thirty pounds.
A baker, in Pye Corner, weighed thirty-four stone, and would frequently
eat a small shoulder of mutton, baked in his oven, and weighing five
pounds; he, however, persisted for one year to live upon water-gruel and
brown bread, by which he lost two hundred pounds of his bulk.
Mr. Collet, master of the Evesham Academy, weighed upwards of twenty-six
stone; when twelve years old, he was nearly as large as at the time of his
death. At two years of age he required two nurses to lift him in and out
of bed, one of whom in a fit of anger he felled to the floor with a blow
of his hand.
At Trenaw in Cornwall, there was a man, known by the name of Grant
Chillcot, who weighed four hundred and sixty pounds; one of his stockings
could contain six gallons of wheat.
Our poet Butler must have met with some such enormous creatures in the
type of his Saxon Duke, who, in Hudibras,
------did grow so fat,
That mice (as histories relate)
Ate grots and labyrinths to dwell in
His postique parts, without his feeling.
If obesity has been the subject of ungenerous jokes, leanness has not
passed unnoticed. An anecdote is related of a reverend doctor of a very
ghostly appearance, who was one day accosted by a fellow with the
following salutation: "Well, doctor, I hope you have taken care of your
_soul_?" "Why, my friend?" said the divine. "Because," replied the
impertinent interlocutor, "your _body_ is not worth caring for."
A poor diminutive Frenchman being ordered by his Sangrado to drink a quart
of ptisan a day, replied, with a heavy sigh, "Alas! doctor, that I cannot
do, since I only hold a pint."
When the Duke de Choiseuil, a remarkably meager man, came to London to
negotiate a peace, Charles Townshend being asked whether the French
government had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, answered, "He did not
know, but they had sent the _outline of an ambassador_."
That change of spare diet to a more nutritious food may bring on some
corpulence, is evidenced in an anecdote of Colly Cibber, who relates that
a poor half-starved actor, who used to play the Apothecary in Romeo and
Juliet, to the life, and with great applause, received an augmentation of
salary in consequence of his popularity. Unfortunately, increase of
wealth led him to increase his fare, until he gradually assumed a
plumpness which unfitted him for the worn-out pharmacopolist; and not
being able to perform in any other line, the poor man was discharged.
However, poverty once more brought him down to his original condition,
when he reappeared upon the boards as triumphantly as ever.
If _embonpoint_ is generally a sign of good-humour and a cheerful
disposition, leanness frequently betokens a sour, crabbed, and ill-natured
character. Solomon has said, "A merry heart doeth good like medicine; but
a broken spirit drieth the bones." This observation, however, cannot be
considered a rule in forming a judgment of various tempers. This is by no
means an easy attempt in our intercourse with the world, when physiognomy
is not always a sure guide in the selection of our companions. Dr.
Franklin tells a singular story on this subject:
"An old philosophical gentleman had grown, from experience, very cautious
in avoiding ill-natured people. To endeavour to ascertain their
disposition he made use of his legs, one of which was remarkably handsome,
the other, by some accident, crooked and deformed. If a stranger at the
first interview regarded his ugly leg more than his handsome one, he
doubted him; but if he spoke of it, and took no notice of his handsome
leg, that was sufficient to determine the philosopher to have no further
acquaintance with him. Every body has not this two-legged instrument; but
every one, with a little attention, may observe signs of this carping,
fault-finding disposition, and take the same resolution of avoiding the
acquaintance of those infected by it. I therefore advise those querulous,
discontented, unhappy people, if they wish to be respected and beloved by
others, and happy in themselves, _to leave off looking at the ugly leg_."
Various expedients, in addition to a better diet, have been resorted to,
to restore lean persons to a better case; but amongst the most singular
that we have on record is that of flagellation. Galen says, that
horse-dealers having been observed to fatten horses for sale by flogging
them, an analogous method might be useful with spare persons who wish to
become stouter. He also mentions slave-dealers who employed similar means.
Suetonius informs us that Musa, the favourite physician of Augustus, used
to fustigate him, not only to cure him of a sciatica, but to keep him
plump. Meibomius pretends that nurses whip little children to fatten them,
that they may appear healthy and chubby to their mothers. No doubt but
flagellation determines a greater influx of blood to the surface, and may
thus tend to increase the circulation, and give tone to parts which would
otherwise be languid. With this intention, _urticatio_, or whipping with
nettles, has been frequently used in medical practice with great
advantage. Xenophon thawed his frozen soldiers by flagellation. In amorous
despondency and grief, Coelius Aurelianus recommended this process, and
Elidoeus Paduanus advises it to bring out tardy eruptions. The most
singular effect of this castigation is recorded by Meibomius, in his work
_De flagrorum usu_, &c., dedicated to a councillor of the Bishop of
Lubeck, with the following epigraph:
Delicias pariunt Veneri crudelia flagra.
Dum nocet, illa juvat; dum juvat, ecce nocet.
Menghus Faventinus had long before extolled this practice, mentioned also
by Coelius Rhodiginus, and various ancient writers, and more recently
recognised as effectual by Rousseau, in his Confessions.
A remarkable case of leanness is mentioned by Lorry in a priest, who
became so thin and dry in all his articulations, that at last he was
unable to go through the celebration of mass, as his joints and spine
would crack in so loud and strange a manner at every genuflexion, that the
faithful were terrified, and the faithless laughed. One of these miserable
laths once undertook a long journey to consult a learned physician on his
sad condition, and having begged to know, in a most piteous tone, the
cause of his desiccation, was favoured with the following luminous answer:
"Sir, there is a predisposition in your constitution to make you lean, and
a disposition in your constitution to keep you so." Another meager patient
being told that the celebrated Hunter had fattened a dog by removing his
spleen, exclaimed, with a deep sigh, "O, sir! I wish Mr. Hunter had
mine."