It would, perhaps, have been an interesting speculation to have tried how far a certain regimen might have tended to reduce Lambert’s excessive bulk, which, however healthy he might have been, could not but be productive of some inconvenience, besides depriving him of enjoyments to which he was passionately attached. The annals of medicine furnish a very remarkable instance of this sort, and though the person bore no resemblance except in bulk to Lambert, yet the analogy is sufficiently striking to induce a belief that the adoption of a similar method would have been attended with similar effects. The case to which we allude is that of Thomas Wood, a miller, of Billericay, in Essex, which is related in the second volume of Medical Transactions, by Sir George Baker. Wood, after passing the preceding part of his life in eating and drinking without weight or measure, found himself in the year 1764, and in the 45th year of his age, overwhelmed with a complication of painful and terrible disorders. In the catalogue were comprehended frequent sickness of the stomach, pain in the bowels, headach, and vertigo; he had almost a constant thirst, a great lowness of spirits, fits of the gravel, violent rheumatism, and frequent attacks of the gout, also two epileptic fits. To this copious list of diseases were added, a formidable sense of suffocation, particularly after meals, and an extreme corpulence of person. On reading the life of Cornaro, recommended to his perusal by Powley, a worthy clergyman in his neighborhood, he immediately formed a resolution to follow the salutary precepts inculcated and exemplified in that performance. He prudently, however, did not make a sudden change in his manner of living; but finding the good effects of his new regimen, after proper gradations both with respect to the quantity and quality of his meat and drink, he finally left off the use of all fermented liquors on the 4th of January, 1765, when he commenced water-drinker. He did not even long indulge himself in this innocent beverage; for on the 25th of Oct. following, having found himself easier and better on having accidentally dined that day without drinking, he finally took his leave of that and every other kind of drink, and not having tasted a single drop of any liquor whatsoever, excepting only what he had occasionally taken in the form of medicine, and two glasses and a half of water drank on the 9th of May, 1766, from that date till August 22d, 1771, the day on which Sir George Baker drew up the account.
With respect to solid nutriment, sometime in the year 1767, was the last time of his eating any kind of animal food. In its room he substituted a single dish, of which he made only two meals in the twenty-four hours; one at four or five in the morning, and the other at noon. This consisted of pudding, (of which he eat a pound and a half,) made of three pints of skimmed milk, poured boiling hot on a pound of sea-biscuit over night, to which two eggs were added next morning, and the whole boiled in a cloth about an hour. Finding this diet too nutritious, and having grown fat during the use of it, he threw out the eggs and milk, and formed a new edition of pudding, consisting only of a pound of coarse flour and a pint of water, boiled together. He was at first much delighted with this new receipt, and lived upon it three months; but finding it not easily digestible, he finally formed a mess, which ever afterwards constituted the whole of his nourishment, composed of a pound of the best flour, boiled to a proper stiffness with a pint and a half of skimmed milk, without any other addition.
Such was the regimen of diet, as agreeable to his palate as his former food used to be, by means of which, with a considerable share of exercise, Wood got rid of the incumbrance of 140 or 150 pounds of distempered flesh and fat; and, to use his own expression, “was metamorphosed from a monster to a person of moderate size; from the condition of an unhealthy decrepid old man to perfect health, and to the vigor and activity of youth:” his spirits lively, his sleep undisturbed, and his strength of muscles so far improved that he could carry a quarter of a ton weight, which he in vain attempted to perform when he was about the age of thirty, and in perfect health.
We leave to medical men to decide what would have been the probable result of a like procedure with respect to Lambert, but for our own part, we cannot forbear thinking that, with his healthy constitution and less advanced age, its consequences would have been infinitely more striking and beneficial.
In order to show how far Lambert surpasses all other men who have hitherto been distinguished for bulk and corpulence, we shall subjoin a brief account of some who have been particularly remarked on this score.
John Love, in the early part of his life, was placed with one Ryland, an engraver, on whose death he returned to his relations in the county of Dorset. At this time he was extremely thin, and at length, became so meager, that his friends were apprehensive of his falling into a consumption. By the advice of physicians, he was provided with every kind of nutritious food, which led him into such habits of ease and indulgence, that he resigned himself entirely to the pleasures of the table. Having commenced business as a bookseller, at Weymouth, he gave full scope to his propensity for good living, and soon grew as remarkably heavy and corpulent, as he was before light and slender. His bulk, probably from the extraordinary contrast in his appearance, excited the astonishment of every spectator, though his weight did not exceed 364lbs. At length, suffocated by fat, he paid the debt of nature, in the forty-first year of his age, and was buried at Weymouth, in October, 1793.
Palmer, who kept the Golden-Lion Inn, at Brompton, in Kent, was a man of uncommon corpulence, and during Lambert’s residence in London, he was induced to visit the metropolis for the purpose of seeing him. Palmer weighed 350lbs. and though it is said that five ordinary men might have been buttoned in his waistcoat, he appeared of diminutive size when placed beside Lambert. He did not survive his journey more than three weeks; and at his funeral it was found necessary to take out the windows of the tap-room, to make a passage for the coffin out of the house, from which it was conveyed to the place of interment in a wagon, as no hearse could be procured sufficiently capacious to admit it.
But the man who approached the nearest to the dimensions of Lambert, was Edward Bright, a grocer, of Malden, in Essex.—Many of Bright’s ancestors were remarkably fat; and he himself was so large and lusty when a boy, that at the age of twelve years and a half, he weighed 144lbs. He increased as he grew up, so that, before he was twenty he weighed 336lbs. The last time he was weighed, which was about thirteen months before his death, his weight, deducting that of his clothes, was 584lbs. It was manifest to himself and to every one about him, that he continued to grow larger after this period, and if we take the same proportion by which he had increased for many years upon an average, namely 28 pounds a year, and allow an addition of only four pounds for the last year, on account of the little exercise he took, while he eat and drank as before, this will bring him to 616lbs. at the time of his death; which, in the opinion of many intelligent people who knew him well, was accounted a very fair and moderate computation.
Bright was 5 feet 9 inches and a half in height; his body round the chest, just under the arms, measured 5 feet 6 inches, and round the belly 6 feet 11 inches. His arm in the middle was 2 feet 2 inches about, and his leg 2 feet 8 inches. He was always strong and active, took much exercise from his childhood till the last two or three years of his life, when he became too unwieldy. He possessed great strength of muscles, could walk very well and nimbly, and could not only ride on horseback, but would sometimes gallop, even after he had attained the weight of between 4 and 5 hundred pounds. He used to go to London, a distance of forty miles, till the journey proved too fatiguing, and he relinquished the practice some years before he died. By this time he had grown to such a size as to excite the notice and wonder of all as he passed along the streets. In the last year or two, he could walk but a short distance, being soon tired and out of breath; travelling abroad but little, and that in a chaise.
Bright had always a good appetite, and when a youth, was rather remarkable in that particular. Though he continued to eat heartily and with a good relish after he grew up, yet he did not take a greater quantity of food than many other men who are said to have good stomachs. As to his drink, though he did not take any liquor to an intoxicating degree, yet, upon the whole, he perhaps drank more than prudence would have dictated to a man of his excessively corpulent disposition. When a very young man, he was uncommonly fond of ale and strong beer, but for many years, his chief liquor was small beer, of which he usually drank a gallon a day. With respect to other liquors, he was extremely moderate, when alone, sometimes drinking half a pint of wine, or a little punch after dinner, and seldom exceeding this quantity; but when he was in company, he did not confine himself to so small an allowance.