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 dÉjeÛner,
Dormant d’un lÉger somme, attendait le dÎner.
La jeunesse en sa fleur brille sur son visage;
Son menton sur son sein descend À triple Étage;
Et son corps ramassÉ, dans sa courte grosseur,
Fait gÉmir les coussins sous sa molle Épaisseur.

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 CÆsar 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 dÉsagrÉmens. 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,

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:—

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.”