OBESITY

Obesity, bane of wealthy Mediterraneans for more than 4,500 years, has an ancient
origin that dates to the Central European Mesolithic era, where "earth mother"
statuettes such as the famed Venus of Willendorf (ca. 15,000-10,000 B.C.E), accen-
tuated adipose deposition on the upper arms, breasts, stomach, hips, and upper thighs.
Male pattern obesity, in turn, can be traced to Ancient Egyptian tomb art dated to
ca. 2400 BCE, where a stone-cut tomb relief depicts the super-generous body of the
noble Meru-Ka-Ra.142 Even a cursory inspection of Greek and Roman statuary, vase
paintings, and funerary reliefs reveals examples of overweight or obese individuals.
Hippocrates offered a specific treatment for obesity, one that blended exercise
with dietary recommendations:
Fat people who want to reduce should take their exercise on an empty stomach and sit
down to their food out of breath. They should not wait to recover their breath. They
should before eating drink some diluted wine, not too cold, and their meat should be
dished up with sesame seeds or seasoning and such-like things. The meat should also
be fat as the smallest quantity of this is filling. They should take only one meal a day,
go without baths, sleep on hard beds and walk about with as little clothing as may be
required.
Galen described a treatment for obesity, but provided few dietary insights except
to use "foods of little nourishment":
I have made any sufficiently stout patient moderately thin in a short time by compelling
him to do rapid running ... then massaging him maximally ... [then after an initial
washing] ... led him to the second bath and then gave him abundant food of little
nourishment, so as to fill him up but distribute little of it to the entire body.144
Paulus of Aegina discussed obesity and recommended exercise and a strict food
regimen to reduce weight:
When the body gets to an immoderate degree of obesity, it will be necessary to melt
it down and reduce it; active exercises, an attenuant regimen, medicines of the same
class, and mental anxiety, bring on the dry temperament and thereby render the body
lean; salts from burned vipers attenuate the body; the body may also be reduced and
attenuated by having an oil rubbed into it, containing the root of the wild cucumber;
one ought not to take food immediately after the bath, but should first sleep for a little
time; thin white wines ought to be used; a smaller quantity of food ought to be given
in proportion to the exercise taken; it will be best if [patients] eat only once in the day.