Fat, Gluttony and Sloth: Obesity in Medicine, Art and Literature

Historical symbol of wealth and fertility, stigma of the modern West, and currently the world’s second-leading cause of preventable death: despite advances in hygiene, science, and public health, obesity and its corpulent imagery are inescapable reminders of a global epidemic and its manifold incarnations. For the first time, the number of overweight people in the world has overtaken the number of those malnourished and in Fat, Gluttony, and Sloth, the current crisis is put in historical perspective. The authors examine the changing meaning of “fat” in the public consciousness—reconsidering art, literature, and the history of medicine alongside circus freaks, pharmacology, and present-day trends in food and fashion—all in an effort to glean knowledge from examining our heavy past.

David Haslam is a medical doctor and clinical director of the National Obesity Forum. He is also visiting lecturer at Chester University and a visiting fellow at the postgraduate medical school of Herts & Beds. Fiona Haslam has written numerous articles on medicine and art and is the author of From Hogarth to Rowlandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain.