Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public

In 1864, a Victorian carpenter named William Banting became the first person to publish a diet book, and in doing so, accidentally created an industry that would eventually be worth billions. Banting had grown desperately ill from obesity: his eyesight was failing, his knees buckled, and doctors could offer him nothing but useless remedies. Then he discovered a radical approach: abandoning bread, sugar, beer, and potatoes while loading his plate with meat and vegetables. The results came quickly, fifty pounds vanished in months, and he felt young again. He wrote this pamphlet not for profit but to help others suffering as he had, distributing it freely until demand forced it into print. The public response was explosive: by the third edition, over 60,000 copies had sold, and Banting entered the English language as synonymous with dieting. What makes this slender volume remarkable isn't just its historical significance as the prototype for every diet book that would follow, but the striking familiarity of its advice. Banting's low-carbohydrate approach predates the modern keto craze by over a century, making his simple story of bodily transformation feel almost impossibly contemporary.