Pounds and Inches
A NEW APPROACH TO OBESITY
BY: A.T.W. SIMEONS, M.D.
SALVATOR MUNDI INTERNATIONAL HOSPITAL
00152 - ROME
VIALE MURA GIANICOLENSI, 77
FOREWORD
This book discusses a new interpretation of the nature of obesity, and while it does not advocate
yet another fancy slimming diet it does describe a method of treatment which has grown out of
theoretical considerations based on clinical observation.
What I have to say is, in essence, the views distilled out of forty years of grappling with the
fundamental problems of obesity, its causes, its symptoms, and its very nature. In these many
years of specialized work, thousands of cases have passed through my hands and were carefully
studied. Every new theory, every new method, every promising lead was considered,
experimentally screened and critically evaluated as soon as it became known. But invariably the
results were disappointing and lacking in uniformity.
I felt that we were merely nibbling at the fringe of a great problem, as, indeed, do most serious
students of overweight. We have grown pretty sure that the tendency to accumulate abnormal fat
is a very definite metabolic disorder, much as is, for instance, diabetes. Yet the localization and
the nature of this disorder remained a mystery. Every new approach seemed to lead into a blind
alley, and though patients were told that they are fat because they eat too much, we believed that
this is neither the whole truth nor the last word in the matter.
Refusing to be side-tracked by an all too facile interpretation of obesity, I have always held that
overeating is the result of the disorder, not its cause, and that we can make little headway until
we can build for ourselves some sort of theoretical structure with which to explain the condition.
Whether such a structure represents the truth is not important at this moment. What it must do is
to give us an intellectually satisfying interpretation of what is happening in the obese body. It
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