A few days afterwards I saw her. She told me she had forgotten to take her medicine the day before. In subsequent visits, she confessed that she had not taken any medicine, either because she had been up very late the previous evening and had laid in bed late that morning, or that she had been spending a day or two in the country; or that, having been out for an early ride, she had forgotten all about it. On the occasion of my last visit, she told me that she was going for some time to her country-seat, and from thence intended to visit a watering-place. The Baroness did not follow my treatment for three days consecutively, and consequently lost nothing of her embonpoint. Under such circumstances, want of success ought surely not to be attributed to inefficacy of the treatment.
A very corpulent professor adopted my system for eight days, and lost three pounds and a half in weight. Being relieved at the same time from a sense of oppression which had continually troubled him, he was delighted, and spoke of the happy results to many of his acquaintances. Unfortunately at this time he received from the country a present of a large basket of grapes, and being very partial to them, neglected my instructions, and partook of them inordinately as long as they lasted. The consequence is, that the professor is as fat as ever, although he had followed my plan of treatment for eight days. Now whose fault is this? Nevertheless, his acquaintances, to whom he had spoken of being under my care, will attribute the failure to me. I shall see him again, no doubt, some of these days, when in danger of suffocation.
The reader who has perused the preceding cases of cure, may say that I have omitted to speak of obesity accompanied with skin disease, and in my introduction mention has been made of its frequency. In truth, many such cases have been met with; but skin disease, in my opinion, is of such a nature that it is better not to give a hint even of the parties in whom it has been met with and cured at the same time with co-existing corpulence.
My method of reducing obesity being thus frankly explained, is perhaps likely to lose its value in the eyes of many, owing to its extreme simplicity. M. Desbouillons, of Brest, a patient whom I successfully treated, wrote to me on the 15th August, 1853:—"On reading your treatise a second time, I cannot but express my astonishment that the medical faculty should so long have failed to discover the means which you now so successfully employ for the cure of obesity."
Having accomplished the object I had in view, it matters not whether it be the result of little study or of long and deep enquiry into the secrets of animated nature; my satisfaction consists in having destroyed those false and prejudicial doctrines which had existed for ages in the writings and teachings of philosophers, and in having demonstrated a truth destined to render important services to our common humanity.
CHAPTER VII.
ON THE SELECTION OF ALIMENTARY SUBSTANCES FAVOURABLE TO THE REDUCTION OF CORPULENCE.
It is to be borne in mind, that in dividing alimentary matter into two kinds—one fitted to develop fat, and the other having an opposite tendency—my object is merely to suit the indispensable requirements of my plan of treatment. Nor is the conclusion to be drawn, that in order to diminish corpulence, an exclusive meat diet is absolutely necessary. Man is omnivorous; that is to say, he partakes of everything entering into the composition of ordinary alimentation; but, for the purposes of my system, azotized substances should constitute, though not exclusively, his principal food.
Large quantities both of animal and vegetable substances compose the ordinary diet of man. According to some philosophers, man should live on flesh only; while others maintain that man is by nature a vegetable feeder. Most naturalists, however, are agreed that the human species is omnivorous; that is to say, can live both upon vegetable and animal matter. A certain proof, in my opinion, that such is the case, is to be found in the fact that man is provided with the two kinds of teeth, the one appertaining especially to carnivorous, and the other to herbivorous animals.