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Many persons, the most famous of whom was Banting, have advanced theories to reduce corpulency and to improve slenderness; but they have been uniformly unreliable, and the whole subject of stature-development presents an almost unexplored field for investigation. Recently, Leichtenstein, observing in a case of myxedema treated with the thyroid gland that the subcutaneous fat disappeared with the continuance of the treatment, was led to adopt this treatment for obesity itself and reports striking results. The diet of the patient remained the same, and as the appetite was not diminished by the treatment the loss of weight was evidently due to other causes than altered alimentation. He holds that the observations in myxedema, in obesity, and psoriasis warrant the belief that the thyroid gland eliminates a material having a regulating influence upon the constitution of the panniculus adiposus and upon the nutrition of the skin in general. There were 25 patients in all; in 22 the effect was entirely satisfactory, the loss of weight amounting to as much as 9.5 kilos (21 pounds). Of the three cases in which the result was not satisfactory, one had nephritis with severe Graves' disease, and the third psoriasis. Charrin has used the injections of thyroid extract with decided benefit. So soon as the administration of the remedy was stopped the loss of weight ceased, but with the renewal of the remedy the loss of weight again ensued to a certain point, beyond which the extract seemed powerless to act. Ewald also reports good results from this treatment of obesity.

Remarkable Instances of Obesity. From time immemorial fat men and women have been the object of curiosity and the number who have exhibited themselves is incalculable. Nearly every circus and dime museum has its example, and some of the most famous have in this way been able to accumulate fortunes.

Athenaeus has written quite a long discourse on persons of note who in the olden times were distinguished for their obesity. He quotes a description of Denys, the tyrant of Heraclea, who was so enormous that he was in constant danger of suffocation; most of the time he was in a stupor or asleep, a peculiarity of very fat people. His doctors had needles put in the back of his chairs to keep him from falling asleep when sitting up and thus incurring the danger of suffocation. In the same work Athenaeus speaks of several sovereigns noted for their obesity; among others he says that Ptolemy VII, son of Alexander, was so fat that, according to Posidonius, when he walked he had to be supported on both sides. Nevertheless, when he was excited at a repast, he would mount the highest couch and execute with agility his accustomed dance.

According to old chronicles the cavaliers at Rome who grew fat were condemned to lose their horses and were placed in retirement. During the Middle Ages, according to Guillaume in his "Vie de Suger," obesity was considered a grace of God.

Among the prominent people in the olden time noted for their embonpoint were Agesilas, the orator Licinius Calvus, who several times opposed Cicero, the actor Lucius, and others. Among men of more modern times we can mention William the Conqueror; Charles le Gros; Louis le Gros; Humbert II, Count of Maurienne; Henry I, King of Navarre; Henry III, Count of Champagne; Conan III, Duke of Brittany; Sancho I, King of Leon; Alphonse II, King of Portugal; the Italian poet Bruni, who died in 1635; Vivonne, a general under Louis XIV; the celebrated German botanist Dillenius; Haller; Frederick I, King of Wurtemberg, and Louis XVIII.

Probably the most famous of all the fat men was Daniel Lambert, born March 13, 1770, in the parish of Saint Margaret, Leicester. He did not differ from other youths until fourteen. He started to learn the trade of a die-sinker and engraver in Birmingham. At about nineteen he began to believe he would be very heavy and developed great strength. He could lift 500 pounds with ease and could kick seven feet high while standing on one leg. In 1793 he weighed 448 pounds; at this time he became sensitive as to his appearance. In June, 1809, he weighed 52 stone 11 pounds (739 pounds), and measured over 3 yards around the body and over 1 yard around the leg. He had many visitors, and it is said that once, when the dwarf Borwilaski came to see him, he asked the little man how much cloth he needed for a suit. When told about 3/4 of a yard, he replied that one of his sleeves would be ample. Another famous fat man was Edward Bright, sometimes called "the fat man of Essex." He weighed 616 pounds. In the same journal that records Bright's weight is an account of a man exhibited in Holland who weighed 503 pounds.

Wadd, a physician, himself an enormous man, wrote a treatise on obesity and used his own portrait for a frontispiece. He speaks of Doctor Beddoes, who was so uncomfortably fat that a lady of Clifton called him a "walking feather bed." He mentions Doctor Stafford, who was so enormous that this epitaph was ascribed to him: -

"Take heed, O good traveler! and do not tread hard, For here lies Dr. Stafford, in all this churchyard."

Wadd has gathered some instances, a few of which will be cited. At Staunton, January 2, 1816, there died Samuel Sugars, Gent., who weighed with a single wood coffin 50 stone (700 pounds). Jacob Powell died in 1764, weighing 660 pounds. It took 16 men to carry him to his grave. Mr. Baker of Worcester, supposed to be larger than Bright, was interred in a coffin that was larger than an ordinary hearse. In 1797 there was buried Philip Hayes, a professor of music, who was as heavy as Bright (616 pounds).

Mr. Spooner, an eminent farmer of Warwickshire, who died in 1775, aged fifty-seven, weighed 569 pounds and measured over 4 feet across the shoulders. The two brothers Stoneclift of Halifax, Yorkshire, together weighed 980 pounds.

Keysler in his travels speaks of a corpulent Englishman who in passing through Savoy had to use 12 chairmen; he says that the man weighed 550 pounds. It is recorded on the tombstone of James Parsons, a fat man of Teddington, who died March 7, 1743, that he had often eaten a whole shoulder of mutton and a peck of hasty pudding. Keysler mentions a young Englishman living in Lincoln who was accustomed to eat 18 pounds of meat daily. He died in 1724 at the age of twenty-eight, weighing 530 pounds. In 1815 there died in Trenaw, in Cornwall, a person known as "Giant Chillcot." He measured at the breast 6 feet 9 inches and weighed 460 pounds. One of his stockings held 6 gallons of wheat. In 1822 there was reported to be a Cambridge student who could not go out in the daytime without exciting astonishment. The fat of his legs overhung his shoes like the fat in the legs of Lambert and Bright. Dr. Short mentions a lady who died of corpulency in her twenty-fifth year weighing over 50 stone (700 pounds). Catesby speaks of a man who weighed 500 pounds, and Coe mentions another who weighed 584 pounds. Fabricius and Godart speak of obesity so excessive as to cause death. There is a case reported from the French of a person who weighed 800 pounds. Smetius speaks of George Fredericus, an office-holder in Brandenburgh, who weighed 427 pounds.

Dupuytren gives the history of Marie Francoise-Clay, who attained such celebrity for her obesity. She was born in poverty, reached puberty at thirteen, and married at twenty-five, at which age she was already the stoutest woman of her neighborhood notwithstanding her infirmity. She followed her husband, who was an old-clothes dealer, afoot from town to town. She bore six children, in whom nothing extraordinary was noticed. The last one was born when she was thirty-five years old. Neither the births, her travels, nor her poverty, which sometimes forced her to beg at church doors, arrested the progress of the obesity. At the age of forty she was 5 feet 1 inch high and one inch greater about the waist. Her head was small and her neck was entirely obliterated. Her breasts were over a yard in circumference and hung as low as the umbilicus. Her arms were elevated and kept from her body by the fat in her axillae. Her belly was enormous and was augmented by six pregnancies. Her thighs and haunches were in proportion to her general contour. At forty she ceased to menstruate and soon became afflicted with organic heart diseases.

Tags: Disorders and Diseases