How to be Plump: or Talks on Physiological Feeding

“Well, I declare, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.”

 
Red cloth 16mo; 60, (4) pp. ads for Duncan’s homeopathic publications. Near Fine with incidental rubbing and a small ink stain to the lower front joint. RBH shows the title once in 1911; OCLC records only 1 copy (UMich).

T. C. Duncan was a practicing homeopathic physician in Chicago. He published several works of popular medicine with a particular interest in child development and cardiovascular health. An advocate for eating whatever’s available, Duncan is ultimately writing about meeting basic nutritional needs for people of any financial means, wrapped into the humorous rhetoric of “plumpness.”

Duncan personally got plump (so the story goes) on a diet of oysters he accepted in trade for treating a fisherman’s family, and that, “Never till after the great Chicago fire did I fully appreciate the fact that the best physiological diet is the cheapest and most convenient.” Writing about a sick mother with a newborn, “To wean the child would kill it, while to continue to allow it to nurse would be slow death for both.” Milk and crackers, slow introduction of soup—and she was plump in three months (9-10). He also addresses habits of exercise recommends 8-9 hours of quality sleep, preceded by a winding-down period before bedtime: "Those who cannot divert the mind will be apt to break down, sooner or later, and will be very hard to fatten” (54).

The language of plumpness and thinness is inexorably tied to modern beauty standards, making Duncan’s criticism of the latter feel radical. “The lean are restless and irritable in mind, rarely contented, never quiet, they form the complaining element of society, and are unstable as a nation" (45). "There is a restless anxiety about lean people that is distressing. They look hungry, sad and irritable. As children, they whine and cry and put all creation out of joint” (24).

In a modern context, his disparaging thinness is fanciful. An abridged version was published in 1988 as How to Be Plump: a Victorian Re-Creation, featuring illustrations and collages, highlighting the seeming absurdity and implicit juxtaposition of norms. But How to Be Plump, beyond its surface implications, isn’t really a foil to beauty standards. The word beauty appears nowhere in the text, nor attractiveness. The book’s radicality comes from asserting that health did not require expensive meals of meat and fresh produce. “Soups are to all people what milk is to children” (11), a premise played out in the rise of soup kitchens. Goofy and ebullient, and every bit as entertaining as the title suggests; but also very earnest, and maybe even a little radical.