Too Fat To Marry.

A very fat young woman came to my office and asked to see me privately. When we were alone she said:

"Are you sure no one can overhear us?"

"Quite sure."

"You won't laugh at me, will you?"

"Madam, I should be unworthy of your confidence if I could be guilty of such a rudeness."

"Thank you, sir; but no one ever called upon you on such a ridiculous errand. You won't think me an idiot, will you?"

"I beg of you to go on."

"You don't care to know my name or residence?"

"Certainly not, if you care to conceal them."

"I have called to consult you about the strangest thing in the world. I will tell you all. I am twenty-three years old. When I was nineteen I weighed 122 pounds; now I weigh 209; I am all filling up with fat. I can hardly breathe. The best young man that ever lived loves me, and has been on the point of asking me to marry him, but of course he sees I am growing worse all the time and he don't dare venture. I can't blame him. He is the noblest man in the world, and could marry any one he chooses. I don't blame him for not wishing to unite himself to such a tub as I am. Why, Doctor, you don't know how fat I am. I am a sight to behold. And now I have come to see if any thing can be done. I know you have studied up all sorts of curious subjects, and I thought you might be able to tell me how to get rid of this dreadful curse."

She had been talking faster and faster, and with more and more feeling (after the manner of fat women, who are always emotional), until she broke down in hysterical sobs.

I inquired about her habits—table and otherwise. She replied:

"Oh, I starve myself; I don't eat enough to keep a canary bird alive, and yet I grow fatter and fatter all the time. I don't believe anything can be done for me. We all have our afflictions, and I suppose we ought to bear them with fortitude. I wouldn't mind for myself, but it's just breaking his heart; if it wasn't for him I could be reconciled."

I then explained to her our nervous system, and the bearing certain conditions of one class of nerves has upon the deposition of adipose tissue. I soon saw she was not listening, but was mourning her sorrow. Then I asked her if she would be willing to follow a prescription I might give her.

"Willing? willing?" she cried. "I would be willing to go through fire, or to have my flesh cut off with red-hot knives. There is nothing I would not be willing to endure if I could only get rid of this horrible condition."

I prepared a prescription for her, and arranged that she should call upon me once a week, that I might supervise her progress and have frequent opportunities to encourage her. The prescription which I read to her was this:

1. For breakfast eat a piece of beef or mutton as large as your hand, with a slice of white bread twice as large. For dinner the same amount of meat, or, if preferred, fish or poultry, with the same amount of farinaceous or vegetable food in the form of bread or potato. For supper, nothing.

2. Drink only when greatly annoyed with thirst; then a mouthful of lemonade without sugar.

3. Take three times a week some form of bath, in which there shall be immense perspiration. The Turkish bath is best. You must work, either in walking or some other way, several hours a day.

"But, doctor, I can't walk; my feet are sore."

"I thought that might be the case, but if the soles of your shoes are four inches broad, and are thick and strong, walking will not hurt your feet. You must walk or work until you perspire freely, every day of the week. Of course, you are in delicate health, with little endurance, but, as you have told me that you are willing to do anything, you are to work hard at something six or seven hours every day."

4. You must rise early in the morning, and retire late at night. Much sleep fattens people.

5. The terrible corset you have on, which compresses the center of the body, making you look a great deal fatter than you really are, must be taken off, and you must have a corset which any dress maker can fit to you—a corset for the lower part of the abdomen, which will raise this great mass and support it.

"This is all the advice I have to give you at present. At first you will lose half a pound a day. In the first three months you will lose from twenty to thirty pounds. In six months, forty pounds. You will constantly improve in health, get over this excessive emotion, and be much stronger. Every one knows that a very fat horse weighing 1,200 pounds, can be quickly reduced to 1,000 pounds with great improvement to activity and health. It is still easier with a human being. That you may know exactly what is being done, I wish you to be weighed; write the figures in your memorandum, and one week from now, when you come again, weigh yourself and tell me how much you have lost."

I happened to be out of the city and did not see her until her second visit, two weeks from our last meeting. It was plain when she entered that already her system was being toned up, and when we were again in my private office, she said:

"I have lost six and a half pounds; not quite as much as you told me, but I am delighted, though nearly starved. I have done exactly as you prescribed, and shall continue to if it kills me. You must be very careful not to make any mistakes, for I shall do just as you say. At first the thirst was dreadful. I thought I could not bear it. But now I have very little trouble with that."

About four months after our first meeting this young woman brought a handsome young man with her, and after a pleasant chat, she said to me:

"We are engaged; but I have told my friend that I shall not consent to become his wife until I have a decent shape. When I came to you I weighed 209 pounds; I now weigh 163 pounds. I am ten times as strong, active, and healthy as I was then, and I have made up my mind, for my friend has left it altogether to me, that when I have lost ten or fifteen pounds more, we shall send you the invitations."

As the wedding day approached she brought the figures 152 on a card, and exclaimed, with her blue eyes running over:

"I am the happiest girl in the world, and don't you think I have honestly earned it? I think I am a great deal happier than I should have been had I not worked for it."

The papers said the bride was beautiful. I thought she was, and I suppose no one but herself and husband felt as much interested in that beauty as I did. I took a sort of scientific interest in it.

We made the usual call upon them during the first month, and when, two months after the wedding, they were spending the evening with us, I asked him if his wife had told him about my relations with her avoirdupois? He laughed heartily, and replied:

"Oh, yes, she has told me everything, I suppose: but wasn't it funny?"

"Not very. I am sure you wouldn't have thought it funny if you could have heard our first interview. It was just the reverse of funny; don't you think so madam?"

"I am sure it was the most anxious visit I ever paid any one. Doctor, my good husband says he should have married me just the same, but I think he would have been a goose if he had."

"Yes," said the husband, "it was foreordained that we two should be one."

"To be sure it was," replied the happy wife, "because it was foreordained that I should get rid of those horrid fifty-seven pounds. I am going down till I reach one hundred and forty pounds, and there I will stop, unless my husband says one hundred and thirty. I am willing do anything to please him."—Dio Lewis' Monthly.