WE are not going to bother here to discuss in detail all the silly reducing preparations which the quacks advertise for the gullible. The greater part of them are advertised in the cheapest sort of magazines and newspapers and are obviously in-tended to appeal to half-wits. Necessarily I assume that if you have got thus far in this book, you are intelligent and do not need my warning against such blatant quackery as these:
“Eat what you wish, but after each meal take one of these tablets. Nothing else is required. Dieting is unnecessary.”
“Just dissolve this powder in your bath and your superfluous fat will fade away. No need to starve yourself, dose with harmful, drastic drugs or go through exhausting and ridiculous exercises. Eat what you like, take no medicine.”
“Reduce without drugs, medicine, sweating, Turkish baths, massage or sweat belts, or applications, or nerve-racking exercises, or starvation diet. It is simply necessary to sponge the fat parts of the body with this delightful preparation. It seems to fairly eat up the superfluous flesh.”
“….. my home treatment is not exercise or diet . . . eat any kind of meat, vegetables, salads, pastry, fish, fowl, nuts, candy that you wantwhen you want it. Drink what you wantwhen you want it. I don’t interfere with your food or drink. No bending over, rolling, playing golf, horseback riding or doing exercises of any kind. Sit in your chair at home or in your chair at your office and the fat will vanish from you by the pint, quart and gallon.”
So they go, pills, powders, pastes anything to sell the poor dupe who is morally too weak to diet and too lazy to exercise! And yet, how often after having bought the preparation which is to take off fat without diet or exercise, the victim will find included in the directions the mild suggestion that a good long walk will do no harm, or has appended a footnote like this :
“Anyone with any common sense knows that in the use of any treatment for corpulency, a more rapid reduction is possible if the users are willing to restrict their diet somewhat by omitting white bread, potatoes, sweets and starchy foods, and al-though diet is no part of my treatment, I offer this information merely by way of suggestion to those who are especially anxious for rapid reduction.”
This is a safe rule: if anybody promises you a reduction cure without diet and exercise, he is a quack.