1. For breakfast eat a piece of beef or mutton as large as your hand, with a slice of white bread twice as large. For dinner the same amount of meat, or, if preferred, fish or poultry, with the same amount of farinaceous or vegetable food in the form of bread or potato. For supper, nothing.
2. Drink only when greatly annoyed with thirst; then a mouthful of lemonade without sugar.
3. Take three times a week some form of bath, in which there shall be immense perspiration. The Turkish bath is best. You must work, either in walking or some other way, several hours a day.
"But, doctor, I can't walk; my feet are sore."
"I thought that might be the case, but if the soles of your shoes are four inches broad, and are thick and strong, walking will not hurt your feet. You must walk or work until you perspire freely, every day of the week. Of course, you are in delicate health, with little endurance, but, as you have told me that you are willing to do anything, you are to work hard at something six or seven hours every day."
4. You must rise early in the morning, and retire late at night. Much sleep fattens people.
5. The terrible corset you have on, which compresses the center of the body, making you look a great deal fatter than you really are, must be taken off, and you must have a corset which any dress maker can fit to you—a corset for the lower part of the abdomen, which will raise this great mass and support it.
"This is all the advice I have to give you at present. At first you will lose half a pound a day. In the first three months you will lose from twenty to thirty pounds. In six months, forty pounds. You will constantly improve in health, get over this excessive emotion, and be much stronger. Every one knows that a very fat horse weighing 1,200 pounds, can be quickly reduced to 1,000 pounds with great improvement to activity and health. It is still easier with a human being. That you may know exactly what is being done, I wish you to be weighed; write the figures in your memorandum, and one week from now, when you come again, weigh yourself and tell me how much you have lost."
I happened to be out of the city and did not see her until her second visit, two weeks from our last meeting. It was plain when she entered that already her system was being toned up, and when we were again in my private office, she said:
"I have lost six and a half pounds; not quite as much as you told me, but I am delighted, though nearly starved. I have done exactly as you prescribed, and shall continue to if it kills me. You must be very careful not to make any mistakes, for I shall do just as you say. At first the thirst was dreadful. I thought I could not bear it. But now I have very little trouble with that."