Obesity: The Biography

231 Pages·2010·2.77 MB·English

by  Sander L. Gilman

obesity
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obesity
The Biography
R
Sander L. Gilman
3
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp
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© Sander L. Gilman 2010
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First published 2010
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Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010923435
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Clays Ltd., St Ives Plc
ISBN 978–0–19–955797–4
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
contents
List of illustrations vi
Prologue ix
1 The exemplary patient 1
2 Obesity from the Ancients to the beginning
of the Modern Age 21
3 Obesity from the Renaissance to
the Enlightenment 38
4 The battle between science and morality for
the cure of obesity 58
5 A somatic or a psychological treatment of
obesity 80
6 New causes; new solutions for obesity 113
7 The “Orient” battles obesity 130
8 Globesity and the Public’s health 158
Glossary 173
Notes 177
Further reading 203
Index 207
v
list of illustrations
1. Daniel Lambert, “A Very Large Man” 2
2. “Phiz” [Hablot Knight Browne], “The Fat Boy
Awake on This Occasion Only” 6
3. “Phiz” [Hablot Knight Browne], “Mary and
the Fat Boy” 10
4. Hippocrates 22
5. A. Cornelius Celsus 26
6. Galen 27
7. Luigi Cornaro 39
8. George Cheyne 53
9. A large gentleman with a walking stick 60
10. Samuel Johnson 62
11. Carl von Noorden 82
12. Edmund Bristow, “Dispensing of Medical
Electricity” 88
13. Sir William Withey Gull 95
14. A man, aged 37, suffering from infantilism
(Type Brissaud) and a physical degenerative
disorder—possibly thyroid 99
15. Eadweard Muybridge, “A Gargantuan Woman
Walking” 108
vi
list of illustrations
16. An earnest discussion of dietetic methods
of achieving longevity during the Ming period
(1368–1644) 133
17. James Gillray, “A Voluptary under
the Horrors of Digestion” 163
18. A female Hottentot 167
vii
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prologue
W
e are, according to most public health authorities,
in the midst of a pandemic of “globesity,” (global
obesity) a term coined in 2001 by the World
Health Organization. But is globesity a disease itself or is it a
symptom of underlying physiological or psychological
illnesses, or a sign of social excess and thus not a disease in the
medical sense at all? And is it really new? Given the predicted
impact of obesity in the twenty-fi rst century on personal
health as well as its social and economic costs for the global
economy, the biography of obesity, unlike other medical cate-
gories, may well be a necessity in determining our medical as
well as social responses to this ancient concern.
This volume is appearing in a series of volumes on the “biog-
raphy of diseases.” Obesity is not itself a disease but rather a
phenomenological category that refl ects the visible manifesta-
tion of body size, which potentially can have multiple (as well
as multifactorial) causes. No one dies from obesity. One dies
from those pathologies that may result from extreme over-
weight. Indeed, obesity may only be a tertiary cause of
morbidity or mortality: it may lead to diabetes, which may lead
to vascular disease. Or, and here is the rub, it may not. Many
people have and do live with excess weight but the notion of
being healthy and overweight seems impossible to imagine in
our day. If you are fat, you are sick. Every medical system we
shall examine has the category of obesity as a state of ill health.
ix