Frontier Dieting

It might seem as though the idea of exercising and eating right was a notion unheard of prior to the 21^st century, but that’s not the case.  According to the December 9, 1882 edition of the New York Medical Gazette, women physicians, however rare they were at the time, subscribed to the belief that a “healthy diet and a brisk turn about the neighborhood is good for the mind and body.”  I personally don’t care how far back the idea of exercise and eating right extends.  I hate to exercise or eat right.  When I think about it, the only exercise program that has ever worked for me is occasionally getting up in the morning and jogging my memory to remind myself exactly how much I hate to exercise and to pick up another box of Cap’n Crunch next time I venture out of my office.  Walking?  Walking?  If it’s so good for you, how come my mailman looks like Jabba the Hut with a quirky thyroid?  But I digress.  In the summer of 1882, a patient who wanted to lose weight visited Doctor Phyllis Groussin of Denver.  Doctor Groussin put the 252 pound woman on a brown rice only diet and told her to march around her the neighborhood twice a day.  After a week the dieter returned to the doctor complaining of “giddiness, headaches, difficulty in walking, and a want of accuracy in manual movements.”  Fearing apoplexy, Doctor Groussin turned all her attention in that direction and prescribed purgatives, mustard footbaths and bicarbonate soda to dilute the blood.  The doctor found out by accident that her patient was mixing the footbath water with whiskey and drinking it.  The patient thought the concoction would help her in her efforts to “march around the neighborhood.”  Now that’s a fitness goal.  If you’re interested in learning more about women physicians of the Old West read The Doctor Wore Petticoats.  Visit www.chrisenss.com for more information.