OBESITY WAS COUNTED DISGRACE BY ANCIENTS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6992, 19 August 1929, Page 5

OBESITY WAS COUNTED DISGRACE BY ANCIENTS

How Romans Kept Fit DID WITHOUT DOCTOBS FOR SIX HUNDRED YEARS Among the Greeks and Homans the social results of over-eating were as painful as the physical. Gluttony produced fatness, and even the ancients had less love for a fat man than the moderns. In Sparta and early Roane and among other war-like peoples obesity was regarded as a disgrace. That a man might naturally grow fat was no excuse (writes Mr Stanley W. Jveyte in an article on “Health Hints from the Ancients” in the June number of the Nineteenth Century). . In Sparta a citizen was threatened with banishment by an indignant magistrate because of the luxuriance of his waist line. The R-oman censoTs, if they discovered a Falstaff among the knights would condemn him to lose his horse as a hint to “walk it off.” Celsus, a Roman citizen, who thought it the duty of every man to study medicine sufficiently to keep himself in health, prescribed methods both of putting on and reducing flesh. To increase weight he advised “moderate exercise, a good deal of rest, unction, and a warm bath 50*1110 time after a meal, moderate cold in winter, full sleep, a soft bed, an easy mind, anything sweet or fat taken with food and drink, and as much in quantity as can be digested.” His regimen for getting thin was ruthless. “The body is attenuated by staying in hot water, the more so if it be salt; by bathing on an empty stomach, by a scorching sun, by all kinds of heat, by staying up at night, by anxiety; too much sleep or too little; by a hard bed, by running and much walking, by all violent exercises, by anything tart and sour taken once a day only, and by the use of uncooled wines on a fasting stomach.” Seneca tried a change of air occasionally, and found that it did him good in mind and body, but he warned his friends not. to let it develop, into the disease of globe trotting. He had no mercy upon globe trotters. ‘ ‘ They reminded him of ants which climb all the way to the top of a shrub and down the other side with nothing gained; and they always look as if on their way to a lire.” Plato attributed to Socrates the saying that his belief was that a good body would not, by its own excellence, make the soul good; but, on the contrary, a good soul would, by its excellence, render the body as perfect as it could be. This daring theory provoked incredulity in his own time and in subsequent ages. In our times there is an inclination to believe there was something in the theory. How the ancients put their theories of right living into practice is shown by the fact that generally both Greeks and Romans rose earlier than wo do making a long morning of it, only the debauchees and cranks staying late in bed. They wore no hats and they dressed in such a way that the air came in contact with all parts of their bodies. Many accustomed themselves to going barefooted. In bodily cleanliness and frequency of bathing they surpassed us. The greater part of the public and private business of the day was finished by noon. In business they were prompt, and in their spare time leisurely. In some countries idleness was punished by law. They removed their bedrooms as far a*s possible from the noise of the streets. Though they approved of meat in theory, they used very little of it —at least during the early, hardy days. Rome grew to sterngth on gruel, kidney beans, onions and garlic. Her decline coincided with the time when, as Seneca described it, the smoke from gourmands’ kitchens sometimes prompted night watchmen to sound the fire alarms. Simple living seems to have kept the Romans healthy for centuries. Pliny boasts that the Romans did without doctors for GOO years. A strong, healthy old age seems to have beon common among the ancients. To be 80 and “fit as a fiddle” seems to have been nothing out of the ordinary. Lucian has left us an interesting list of celebrated men, all of whom died at SO or more, in full mental and physical health. They include kings, statesmen, soldiens, philosophers, historians, poets, and men of letters; and the average age of these old gentlemen at death works out at 93 years. The gayest of them was Philemon, the comic poet, who died merrily at 97 in fits of laughter.