Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/52

 Other things being equal, that season should be chosen when the person usually feels in best health.

With these precautions, the more abrupt, decided, and total the change, the better. There is no wisdom and less satisfaction in a gradual reform. This change includes three points, diet, habits, and medicines. And first as to diet.

Here we can in no wise escape the mention of Banting. The pursy Englishman with his tract "On Corpulence" will figure conspicuously for some time to come in treatises on this topic. Some men of science were outraged at his presumption in trenching on their domain. They either cried out, "It is not new," or else, "It is not true." But the stubborn fact remained that the fat old gentleman did grow comfortably spare.

The truth of the matter is that certain foods are much more readily converted into fat than others, and that if persons sedulously avoid such, they will gradually reduce their weight. Now it has long been known in a general way, that these articles are those which contain sugar or starch in large quantities. But when Mr. Banting paid his guinea, and expected some sound practical advice in exchange for it, the doctor either pooh-poohed at his anxiety, told him not to worry himself about his size, that it was natural at his age, and so forth; or else shook his head ponderously, and said oracularly, "Avoid saccharine and amylaceous articles of diet," disdaining any farther specification.