The Principles Involved in the Treatment of Obesity

To be thin is fashionable. Likewise, if not carried too far, it is conducive to comfort and longevity. It is not my purpose here to discuss the fatty dystrophies, such, for instance, as are believed to result from disease of the endocrine organs, but rather to confine myself to the treatment of ordinary obesity of moderate degree, the type which is best exemplified by that increase in weight which comes with the ease and contentment of middle age. It is this type which we encounter most often. Does the metabolism of the obese patient proceed along lines identical with that of the normal person? Probably not. Yet, in the well known experiment of Rubner¹on two brothers, one of them fat and the other thin, it was definitely shown that the basal metabolic rate, per square meter of body surface, was the same in the two. We must conclude,