There are no “ifs” and “buts” about my promises to my patients. I undertake to reduce corpulence by rational individual treatment in each and every case entrusted to me, and I undertake to promise (sic) that my treatment is in no way weakening, that it is permanent, and also that it has absolutely no ill effects.
From the first letter:
One of the Tablets should be taken after each of the three chief meals of the day for the next fortnight. I suggest that if convenient you weigh yourself before beginning the course, and again in fourteen days’ time, with the same scales and in the same clothes. You will find you have lost weight, while improving in your general condition.... My course of Treatment lasts a month except in unusual cases. The tablets I have sent you for the first fortnight will at once put a stop to the fat-forming habit of the body; these tablets are taken during the first fortnight in all cases, and while excellent results follow even in this brief period, they need to be followed up from the fifteenth day by additional and different remedies, adapted to each individual case.
In order to prepare this part of your Treatment I shall need to have before me full particulars of your case, which you can easily give me by filling up the Consultation Form enclosed herewith....
My fee for a month’s course of Treatment is one guinea, but you will see that I have given you credit for the first fortnight’s Treatment sent you herewith, because this is free in accordance with my offer through the Press. This means that by sending at once you can have one month’s complete treatment for half cost. To secure this concession you must, however, send me the Consultation Form filled up, and remittance for 10s. 6d. in time to continue your Treatment on the fifteenth day, and I must have at least three clear days in which to consider your case and prepare and post your Treatment to reach you in time.
The “Consultation Form” contained questions as to age, height, weight, chest and abdomen measurements, details of bodily condition, habits, and diet; this was filled up so as to represent an ordinary case of moderate obesity, and returned with 10s. 6d. In the next letter it was stated:
I am preparing your second fortnight’s treatment, and it will be forwarded in due course, but I feel I should like to take this opportunity of pointing out to you that there are special features about your case which, while not preventing the accomplishment of the improvement you desire, will, however, entail a little longer course of treatment than one month.
In my opinion your case requires a two months’ course of my treatment, at the end of which time the results will be all that you can desire. I thought it only right you should know this, and I would like you to tell me if you will take the full course my experience leads me to advise you.
My fee for the two months’ course is two guineas, but you have already standing to your credit the sum of one guinea, being one half-guinea allowed for first fortnight’s free trial, and the other half-guinea you have just sent me.
I should like you to take the full course my experience tells me is necessary for you, and if you now send me the one guinea balance, I will at once arrange for the supply of all the necessary remedies to you at the proper intervals.