leaps in the character of Harlequin; neither should we be inclined to give the odds in his favour if he were to enter himself as a competitor for the long race at a Highland meeting. But gentlemen in the position of Mr. Banting, who, we believe, has retired into private life after a successful business career, are not expected to rival Leotard, or to pit themselves in athletic contests against hairy-houghed Donald of the Isles. As a deer-stalker, it may be that he would not win distinction -for it is hard work even for lightweights to scramble up corries, or crawl on their bellies through mosshags and water-channels for hours, before they can get the glimpse of an antler-but many a country gentleman, compared with whom Mr. Banting at his biggest would have been but as a fatted calf to a fullgrown bull, can take, with the utmost ease, a long day's exercise through stubble and turnips, and bring home his twenty brace of partridges, with a due complement of hares, without a symptom of bodily fatigue. Mr. Banting seems to labour under the hallucination that he was at least as heavy as Falstaff -we, on the contrary, have a shrewd suspicion that Hamlet would have beaten him in the scales.

It is, of course, in the option of all who are dissatisfied with their present condition to essay to alter it. Lean men may wish to become fatter, and fat men may wish to become leaner; but so long as their health remains unimpaired, they are not fit subjects for the doctor. We have no doubt that the eminent professional gentlemen whom Mr. Banting consulted took that view of the matter; and having ascertained that there was in reality no disease to be cured, gave him, by way of humouring a slight hypochondriac affection, a few simple precepts for the maintenance of a health which in reality required no improvement. Probably they opined that the burden of his flesh was no greater than he could bear with ease; and cer

tainly, under the circumstances, there was no call upon them whatever to treat him as if he had been a jockey under articles to ride a race at Newmarket, whose success or failure might depend upon the exact number of pounds which he should weigh when getting into the saddle.

To

Excessive corpulence, we freely admit, may have its inconveniences. It is, as Mr. Banting justly remarks, rather a serious state of matters, when a man, by reason of fatness, cannot stoop to tie his shoe, "nor attend to the little offices which humanity requires, without considerable pain and difficulty." be "compelled to go down-stairs slowly backwards" is an acrobatic feat which no one save an expectant Lord Chamberlain would care to practise; and it is not seemly, and mnst be a disagreeable thing, "to puff and blow with every exertion," like a porpoise in a gale of wind. But, as we gather from the pamphlet, these distressing symptoms did not exhibit themselves until very recently, whereas Mr. Banting says that he has been soliciting a remedy from the Faculty any time during the last thirty years. He also makes constant reference to his increasing obesity throughout that period; therefore we are entitled to conclude that with advancing years he acquired additional weight, and did not arrive at the climax until 26th August 1862, when, as he informs us, his weight was 202 lb., or fourteen stone six. That is not, after all, a very formidable weight for an elderly gentleman of sedentary habits. Tom Johnson, the pugilist, weighed fourteen stone when he entered the ring against and conquered Isaac Perrins of Birmingham, supposed to be the most powerful man in England, and weighing seventeen stone. Neat weighed fourteen stone after training; and, according to the best of our recollection (for we have mislaid our copy of 'Boxiana') Josh Hudson was considerably heavier. Tom Cribb, the champion of England,

weighed sixteen stone before he went into training for his great fight with Molineaux, and reduced himself in five weeks, through physic and exer. cise, to fourteen stone nine. By dint of sweating and severe work, he came to thirteen stone five, which was ascertained to be the pitch of his condition, as he could not reduce further without weakening. Such instances go far to prove that, even when his circumference was the widest, Mr. Banting had no reason to complain of excessive corpulency. But even if he had, the enlarging process was a gradual one-he had been complaining of obesity for thirty years; and if we suppose that he gained only a pound and a half per annum-which is a very low rate of increase-he must have been applying to the doctors for remedies against corpulence when he weighed only eleven stone three-a weight which most men of thirty-five years of age would regard as natural and appropriate.

We have thought it right to make these observations, because Mr. Banting has chosen to insinuate that medical men generally are so ignorant of their calling, that they do not understand the evils of obesity, or cannot conquer it by prescribing the proper

diet.

"The remedy," says Mr. Banting, "may be as old as the hills, as I have since been told, but its application is of very recent date; and it astonishes me that such a light should have remained so long unnoticed and hidden, as not to afford a glimmer to my anxious mind in a search for it during the last twenty years, even in directions where it might have been expected to be known. would rather presume it is a new light, than that it was purposely hidden, merely because the disease of obesity was not immediately dangerous to existence, nor thought to be worthy of serious consideration."

I

Now, let us steadfastly survey this new light, which was flashed on the astonished eyes of Mr. Banting by the last practitioner whom he consulted. That light-but we really cannot continue the metaphor with

out making a botch of it, so let us have recourse to simpler language, and give Mr. Banting's account of the dietary which he was advised to follow, and the reasons assigned therefor.

"For the sake of argument and illustration, I will presume that certain articles of ordinary diet, however beneficial in youth, are prejudicial in advanced life, like beans to a horse whose common orIt may be dinary food is hay and corn. useful food occasionally, under peculiar circumstances, but detrimental as a constancy. I will therefore adopt the analogy, and call such food human beans. The items from which I was advised to abstain as much as possible were,-bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer, and potatoes, which had been the main (and, I thought, innocent) elements of my existence, or at all events they had for many years been adopted freely. These, said my excellent adviser, contain starch and saccharine matter tending to create fat, and should be avoided to me that I had little left to live upon, altogether. At the first blush it seemed but my kind friend soon showed me that there was ample, and I was only too happy to give the plan a fair trial, and, within a very few days, found immense benefit from it. It may better elucidate the dietary plan if I describe generally what I have sanction to take: and that man must be an extraordinary person who

would desire a better table:

For breakfast, I take four or five ounces of beef, mutton, kidneys, broiled fish, bacon, or cold meat of any kind except pork; a large cup of tea (without milk or sugar), a little biscuit, or one ounce of dry toast.

For dinner, Five or six ounces of any fish except salmon, any meat except pork, any vegetable except potato, one ounce of dry toast, fruit out of a pudding, any kind of poultry or game, and two or three glasses of good claret, sherry, or madeirachampagne, port, and beer forbidden.

For tea, Two or three ounces of fruit,

a rusk or two, and a cup of tea
without milk or sugar.

For supper, Three or four ounces of
meat or fish, similar to dinner, with
a glass or two of claret.
For nightcap, if required, A tumbler
of grog-(gin, whiskey, or brandy,

without sugar) or a glass or two of claret or sherry. "This plan leads to an excellent night's rest, with from six to eight hours' sound sleep. The dry toast or rusk may have a tablespoonful of spirit to soften it, which will prove acceptable. Perhaps I did not wholly escape starchy or saccharine matter, but scrupulously avoided those beans, such as milk, sugar, beer, butter, &c., which were known to contain them."

Mr. Banting subsequently specifies veal, pork, herrings, eels, parsnips, beetroot, turnips, and carrots as improper articles of food.

Now, before inquiring whether this dietary scheme be a new discovery or not, we beg to observe that Mr. Banting has fallen into a monstrous error in asserting that every substance tending to promote fatness or increase the bulk of the human body is necessarily deleterious. His analogy, as he calls it, of the beans, is purely fanciful and absurd. Farinaceous food, which, with, extraordinary presumption, he denounces as unwholesome, forms the main subsistence of the peasantry, not only of the British Islands, but of the whole of Europe; and are we now to be told, forsooth, that bread, meal, and potatoes are "prejudicial in advanced life"-that they may be "useful food occasionally, under peculiar circumstances, but detrimental as a constancy"? Are we to conclude, because Mr. Banting's medical adviser prohibited them, that milk and butter, beer and sugar, are little short of absolute poison? It would be easy to show, from the recorded tables of longevity, that the persons who have attained the most advanced ages, far beyond the ordinary span of human existence, have never used any other kind of diet save that which Mr. Banting's adviser has proscribed; but the idea is so manifestly preposterous, that it carries with it its own refutation. If Banting's bill of fare be the right one, and if the articles which he has been advised to avoid are

generally hurtful to adults-heaven help not only the working-classes, but the greater proportion of the middle order, who certainly cannot afford to begin the day as Mr. Banting does, with a meat breakfast of kidneys, broiled fish, or bacon, such as might make a Frenchman stare, to repeat the diet, with the additions of poultry or game, both for dinner and supper, to interject a fruity tea, and to wash down each meal with a few glasses of claret, sherry, or madeira!

In fact Mr. Banting has fallen into the egregious error of supposing that the food which agrees with him must agree with every other human being, and that articles which have been, perhaps judiciously, denied to him, must necessarily be hurtful to the rest of mankind. His logical position is this

Banting is a mortal;

Bread, potatoes, &c., are bad for
Banting-therefore

No mortal should eat bread or
potatoes.

But the falsity of the syllogism is apparent. We are not all afflicted by Mr. Banting's tendency towards obesity, and therefore we need not regard "beans" with his more than Pythagorean horror. There is a deep truth in the old adage, that "what is one man's meat is another man's poison;" and Mr. Banting might have escaped no small amount of ridicule had he carefully laid it to heart, before promulgating the doctrine that kidneys are more wholesome than potatoes, and that bread should be generally tabooed.

We fully appreciate the excellence of the motive which has induced Mr. Banting to offer his observations upon corpulence to the public; but we can inform him that there is no kind of novelty in the system which was recommended by his last medical adviser, and which has led to such fortunate results. Training has long ago been reduced to a science, and the diet to be observed during training has received the most careful attention.