Fight against FATNESS

You probably think that the slimming market is something which belongs to the latter half of the twentieth century. Yet Allan's Anti‐Fat was advertised to our fat predecessors as long ago as 1878. It was a ‘concentrated fluid extract of sea lichens’ that prevented the body from converting food into fat. This was an American concoction, but we British were no better. Dr. Grey's Electric Fat Reducing Pills were advertised in the ‘Illustrated Sporting and Drama News’ of 1893. These were capable of ‘rapidly and quite safely dissolving superfluous fat, permanently curing corpulency, and improving the general health and figure’. He even kept a ‘special preparation for Army, Naval and Hunting Men, Farmers Jockeys and stubborn cases that have resisted other treatment’. It almost sounds as if the upper classes were ‘allowed’ to have a better class of fat! Leeches were once the doctor's stand by for most diseases and obesity was an obvious case for their use. The leeches got fatter while the patient got thinner!