Ballou’s Dollar Monthly, March 16, 1862. 300 pounds! Why, it simply beggars belief. Seems like the guy’s nutritional advisers missed the memo on the whole low-carb thing, although the basic principle had been laid out in Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste in 1825. Also seems like Americans have gotten a lot better at coping with being fat over time.
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3 Comments
My significant other made a good point when I showed this to him: people also used to be shorter on average, so we could be talking about a man who is 5 feet tall and weighs 300 pounds.
I don’t think they were *that* much shorter. I shall have to to look into this though.
Another point he brought up is that childhood malnutrition was common, so an adult may have weaker bones and/or muscles as a result, which would make 300 pounds more of a burden.