Show > L VIGTIMS1 F OBESITY II 1 I > i i rL U Donn Piatts Observations on the Scourge of Fleshiness HowFashionable lVoincn l1 Fight toGet Bld of ThTBirFatf1 I Do Votf know mdear boy1 said to a friend who had opened his doors to me on Madison Avenue a little before Lent set inand I saw beautiful rooms crowded witlrj en nna Jw men intheir best attire do you know that America is getting dismally fat 1 More so than wasalways the > case he asked Well I should think so responded 1 When I was a nightblooming serious young man girls were delicate and slen der > thewomen appeared parties like inverted tombs with all thebones on the top Now the girls are stout nnrl tho mothers mountains of flesh wu My friend essayed a speech in reply but had tot get one side for a gorgeous creature who rose y like Yonus from asea oHkirts1 nnd swept between usVlnoticed her superb head set on her statuesque neck while over her full bust and from the snowy precipice of her shoulders fell a thin gauzy stuff that like the smoke of battle aboutthe Star Spangled Banner f half concealed while revealing all the beauties of a fprm divine After her panted the mother fioly SVloses what amass a-mass of adipose that no could gauze conceal con-ceal orsoftenl J I I dont knowt said my host getting round these feminine specimens of animated ani-mated adipose what we had in the past to which you refer but female New York of the aristocratic sort is being agitated with an effort to throw off its obesity and come down to its fighting weight What do you mean I asked I mean that aclcv womanhas discovered I dis-covered the process of reducing the flesh without injury to the health and she has more patients and a heavier income than the most noted specialist of New York With drugs No I believe not yes certainly she has a medicine To tell you the truth I dont know much about it not being I troubled myself All I know is that a line appeared in the Herald one day Obesity treated and cured by Helen Barnard Pflnnorei and she had two or three remarkable cases and then all New Yorkall fat New Yorktook after her and she has certainly been remarkably re-markably successful I can point you out half a dozen cases in this room There do you see that lady near the I door talking to that < man of heavy moustache and hairless skull Her physique perfect now year ago she weighed two hundred and fifty if a pound I did not scrutinize the lady closely for the name of this curer of excessive fat carried me backin memory to days in Washington when edited insults for the Capital and Mrs Helen Barnard was a noted woman in the journalistic and political circles of the national capital I remembered her as a tall handsome woman who sat for years the only female in the reporters gallery taking notes and writing letters as if a manand a clover manknocked off the sentences The fact is that Helen Barnard was more of a man in her intellectual turn than a woman Her brother pendriyers always spoke of her as a perfect gentleman gen-tleman While with her shapely head and its profusion of nutbrpwn hair and a sweet womanly outlook from her eyes there was a jaw below and a firm set mouth that indicated more force of character char-acter than is given toa womanonce in a hundred years Helen Barnard was admir diebjc t d and feared by the leading men of Washington Wash-ington Lamar Garfield Benjamin Franklin Butler and old Jerry Black were wont to talk political matters with her and be influenced by her opinions When a commission was organized to visit Europ and look into and report upon the abuse o emigrants in the steerage steer-age while crossing the Atlantic Helen Barnard said that one of the commissioners commission-ers should be a woman Certainly snorted the Hon Ben Butler and makinghis way to President GrantKhe had Mrs Barnard madeone of the commissioners com-missioners Now aHthe gentlemen T > n thatcom mission regarded it as merely a holiday outing and to Europe they jvent vjsited the exposition at Vienna and returned iri the fall without seeing anemigran caring a continental copper whether they died in the steerage or not Not so with our brainy woman she had a purpose and worked it out in her own way She visited the homes of the class from which we get our emigrants to see for herself what they were and how they lived In Ireland Wales and Germany she lived mong the poor studied their condition and then returning to Liverpool put on an old dress changed her name and returned re-turned to New York in the steerage ot the Inman line To one acquainted with hardships of sucha Passage is hard for alize that a refined delicate woman should brave its privations and face its abuse She did this howeverand her reportis one of the ablest tate papers on file at V ashin tonS ton-S she did tbe same sort of a thing for our blanketed wards the Indians In-dians in the for West VK So altogether she is one the few I remember re-member Xashingtonwho are stars of the first magnitude and I hastened to look her up New York however is not only a busy place but a great center One hour on Broadway brings in review all one is familiar with in New York A month in New York brings one jn contact con-tact with all whom he knows the contii nent over I forgot mv resolve and would have passed it to the limbo of unremembered unremem-bered things but for the accident of meeting meet-ing the Hon P H Watson I did not at War Secre first recognize the Assistant tary of the great Stanton who organized during the great civil conflict victory Seemed to The late Assistant Secretary s Have renewed his youlh When I saw flesh him before he had taken on more than was comfortable On this occasion of adipose had not only disappeared the excess peared but in lace and bearing hefchad evidence of the highest health On remarking this ho told imo that he condition to treatment owed his present Barnard Dons ahtheandfrof DrBelen at1tfi hanq That Bam name agamO I secured se-cured more her addIess and in a few minutes found myself at 130 West Fortyfourth in the presence of my former friend street and admiration I found the same friend woman with the same kInd tall graceful mouth firm set chin and decisive mOQ eves Well Isaid this is anew business iid iver of State papersreduc penfdnver jJ fera t of New YorK iing the superabundance flesh Oddjsit not I she made reply V And how did it come about1 to journalism Simply enough I quit study medicine hutJLdid notfind quite formed Havmg rown to the fancy Ibidformcd reduc to practice the quite stout I began q I studied it of obesity uponthysclf tion upon extant readall ± books thesubje4t and finally discovered liow to reduce the the time retain flesh and at the same health Obesity is not only itself a disease rheumatism but predisposes one to ease hearttroubles and inflammatory diseases generally A ButthHfl contraryto the general I i impression IB it notralso opposed to the r 1 i teaching of the regular physicians 1 I asked Certainly 1J sheTeplied4bnt do you not know that thirtyyearsagO these same regular physicians taught that a patient suffering from fever must not be allowed cold water and that milk was held to be an inflammatory food and not allowed in fever and that now the fever patient is permitted all the cold water he wishes and that milk is recommended as his food par excellence And thirty years from now when an obese patient suffering from whatever cause consults his physi cian the first thing to be done will be to reduce his fat C Well do you accomplish this diet alone by H Oh no I give a simple constitutional remedy which not only hastens the re duction but avoids all the dangers and discomforts of those who have tried the Banting t Bystem o 1 the one hand and the antifat medicines on the other it This remedy is your secret Of course but not a patent Is not this something like quackery Very likely but do you know thnt quack has become a Tery cheap cpi thet that Loomis and Hammond are at L swords point that the New York Aca I deny of Medicine1 split into factions fighting like cats and dogs as to what constitutes a quack and that ifa venerable vener-able president Dr Fordyce Barker came near being expelled recently on a charge ofi quackery 1 I Good for you And you will goon eliminating obesity lrom the fashionable circles of New York Not altogether L have made a discovery dis-covery of far more importance than that I have fbund from the start that too much flesh or too little flesh originated in impaired digestion To get clear of the adipose I had to bring my patients up to the best health attainable Very well accident threw in my way a poor woman suffering from cancer in the breast that her physician had resolved to remove through a surgical operation She was suffering and in such ill health that the proposed operation promised death I told her I thought I could through treatment treat-ment so restore her general health that she could bear the shock She consented I not only restored her general health but to my surprise I saw the cancer disappear dis-appear Helen Barnard Densmore I interrupted inter-rupted 1 if you claim to possess a cancer cure I am done with you I dont believe be-lieve in your flesh elimination Stop a second she said the cancer can-cer disappeared and the doctor said that he had been mistaken in his diagnosis that it was a tumor evidently and not a cancer I accepted that although he would have but for me called in his surgeon sur-geon and killed his patient Perhaps he was right in the end although so grossly wrong in the beginning but it started me in the way of investigation I have now a poor woman wbo has been examined by the most eminent professor pro-fessor of surgery in this city and her case pronounced that of cancer past cure She is gettingbetter and if lam not grossly deceived will be cured Is your medicine so powerful then 1 No it is not but accompanied by the freatment it seems to be effective Excuse Ex-cuse me here is one of my patients A stunning turnout bad dashed up to the door andfrom it emerged a middle aged woman carrying a mountain load of furs and velvets and flesh It is not so long since that Hawthorne in his book on English life spoke of the tendency to flesh the people of England are now troubled with especially the women who were stately and presentable as girls andoffensive middle age from their obesity He said the bust of a middle mid-dle aged woman made Rome howl This was then supposed to be in violent contrast con-trast to our own land now we have the beefy exhibits as well as the Bulls I was entertained by the husbandDr Densmorea regular practitioner a graduate grad-uate of the New York University Medical College while the patient within was being treated He is a quiet thoughtful sort of gentleman who seemed to be somewhat surprised at the current in which he found himself floating on to fortune for-tune It was odd to see a regular practitioner practi-tioner engaged in such jrregular business as curing any one but a great discovery and an indomitable will carried him through Speaking of the medicated Sylphied process f female reduction reminds me of Fanny Davenport who nightly kills Fedora not as the author intended in thfflasVtiut as the audience discovers to dismay in the first actis a noted specimen of successful elimination of lovely flesh Some two years since 1 saw Fannjr and recognized the unpleasant fact that her adipose was overtaking her beauty Last night she caromed on the upholstery of Fedora human handsome and liable to be loved This she has accomplished ac-complished without impairing her health and that is the wonder of it J Clara Louise KoflOgg who would bo a great priina donna had she little knowledge knowl-edge of ncting and a voice does not try the eliminating process although she is mountainous in her adipose But do you know thatwhile this dread disease of fat is fatal to an actress as it was to Crolzette aTprima donna may get as unwleldly as she pleases solong as her voice remains DONN PIATT |