The weekly Thibodaux sentinel and journal of the 8th Senatorial District. [volume] (Thibodaux, Lna. [i.e. La.]) 1875-1898, 1893-08-12
Vhibodaux Sentinel.
TO REDUCE THE WEIGHT.

Diet for Persons Overburdened With Flesh.
Men and who suffer from
overweight and who have worried with
a score of unsatisfactory expedients
that promised to reduce uncomfortable
~adiposity, will surely be interested in
the methods of treatment which were
employed in the case of the late Sena-
tor Stanford; treatment that would
probably have been completely success
full had not the fatty degeneration of
h heart gone beyond the stage where
dietetic influences were of any avail.
None of the known varieties of medi-
cine are really palatable, and all the
courses of treatment so far discovered
are more or less irksome to those whose
health needs repairs, and the course
which the senator was religiously
adhering to when he died was most
distasteful to him. Fried hashed
beef, three times a day, washed down
with water hat was hot as drinkable
water can be, was the only food that
entered the senator's stomach for the
last seven weeks of his life. This
change of regimen was one against
which the patient inwardly rebeled
he had lived as he pleased and
he pleased to live well-but he had
placed himself in the hands of a phy-
stefan who was an expert in the pro-
longation of threatened mems days,
and vas faithful to the instructions
given. Tempted continually to indulge
in the food on which others who sat al
his table feasted, the senator consumed
only the moderate quantity of finely
chopped beef. fried until cooked
through, and the ever-accompanying
glass of hot water. The primary re-
suit of this diet was the loss of thirty
one pounds of flesh in fifty days and
the departure of that apoplectic forid-
ity which had for the past two or
three years been one of the SEN
ator's most marked facial character
istics. How much longer the treat
ment would have been continued. and
what the ultimate results might have
been in this particular case can not be
guessed, for the fatty degeneration of
the heart suddenly reached the point
of fatality and the dieting came to an
end. Medical experience would sug-
gest, though, hat everything would
have been well had the most vital of
organs been unaffected; that the mere
bulk could easily have been removed
and future growth controlled. 1t is
questionable whether the speed of re-
duction was not O great, and, al
though in the case under discussion
the rate probably had nothing to do
with the decease, still the best of the
authorities are satisfied that the loss
exceeding ten pounds a month is
too much of a drain upon ordi-
nary vitality. The principle of the
reduction is easily understood.
Lean meat being heterogeneous,
forms muscle and not fat. Lean
meat eaten by a very lean person would
be difficult of assimilation, for fat is
necessary to the assimilative process,
but when swallowed by one who is
plentlfully supplied with fat the COM.
bination supports life and, of course,
diminishes the encumbering tissue con-
siderably.
The usefulness of hot water as an
anti-dyspeptic beverage has long been
asserted; it helps digestion as no other
perfectly harmless fluid can. Food
that is starchy or fat is Ggested in the
small intestines, but lean meat dis
tributes its good qualities from the
stomach, and in that work a suficiency
Of hot water materially assists the fire.
~quently ineffective gastric juice. AL
together the lean meatremedy" seems
% be the best yet known for the re-
moval of super1uous fat: and it has the
advantages also of being cheap and
easy of Observation-Disclosures Star