On comparing the following analysis of Mr. Banting's diet for getting thin with my tables of normal diets it will be seen that it yields less than half the normal quantity of Carbon, leaving the deficiency to be obtained from the fat already stored up in the system, by the consumption of which the obesity is removed. The fault consists in this reduction of Carbon being obtained by diminishing the Hydro-carbons (fats) of the food instead of only cutting off the Carbo-hydrates (sugar and starch).

Mr. Banting's Diet.

Mr. Banting's Diet. (Approximate Analysis.)

It has happened to me to have to do with a great number of persons who have tried Bantingism, and I do not hesitate to say that, up to the present time, Mr. Banting has done a great deal more good than harm. He did not bring forward a single new fact or new idea, but he had the luck, by zealously advertising a striking case of the effects of a plan of treatment, long familiar to every medical man who understood physiology, to convince the public of the immense influence on the animal organism of modifications in the quantity and quality of food - an influence in the importance of which they did not half believe when urged upon them in the form of medical advice.

Mr. Banting candidly told his readers that he was ignorant of the physiology of food, but they did not care for this while determined to try his plan, and hence it is not to be wondered at that while many have been benefited many have done themselves harm.

But the harm that has been done at present is not very great, and is nothing to compare with the harm that will come, if, frightened by some striking case in which Bantingism has nearly cost a man his life, the public rush away from it as blindly as they rushed into it, and establish for a time such a popular prejudice against systems of diet, that a medical man shall not be able to institute those rational and scientific regulations of diet which are often more important than any other means of treatment in the management of disease. - The plain and simple facts of the case are these. 1. A certain amount of fat in the system is one of the most essential elements of health. 2. The quantity required by different individuals to maintain health differs. 3. The effects of a deficiency of the quantity actually required, in any given organism, are most disastrous, the tissues of the body and the brain, and nerves, being at length disintegrated to supply the elements of fat which they contain. 4. When there is a quantity of fat in the body in excess of that necessary to health, it may be lessened with great and needed advantage, provided it be done slowly and cautiously - allowing the nutritive functions of the system to accommodate themselves gradually to the altered condition - and most peremptorily stopping the loss of fat before it has amounted to a deficiency in the quantity necessary to healthy nutrition.

Nothing is easier than to make a fat man thinner by altering his diet, but to do this safely and well is by no means devoid of difficulty, and in a large number of cases requires the greatest caution, consideration, and judgment on the part of those who rule the modifications in the diet of the patient. But there is no denying that, with such care and judgment, it can in most cases be done safely and advantageously.