" He measured at the breast 6 feet 9 inches and weighed
460 pounds. One of his stockings held 6 gallons of wheat. In 1822
there was reported to be a Cambridge student who could not go out
in the daytime without exciting astonishment. The fat of his legs
overhung his shoes like the fat in the legs of Lambert and
Bright. Dr. Short mentions a lady who died of corpulency in her
twenty-fifth year weighing over 50 stone (700 pounds). Catesby
speaks of a man who weighed 500 pounds, and Coe mentions another
who weighed 584 pounds. Fabricius and Godart speak of obesity so
excessive as to cause death. There is a case reported from the
French of a person who weighed 800 pounds. Smetius speaks of
George Fredericus, an office-holder in Brandenburgh, who weighed
427 pounds.
Dupuytren gives the history of Marie Francoise-Clay, who attained
such celebrity for her obesity. She was born in poverty, reached
puberty at thirteen, and married at twenty-five, at which age she
was already the stoutest woman of her neighborhood
notwithstanding her infirmity. She followed her husband, who was
an old-clothes dealer, afoot from town to town. She bore six
children, in whom nothing extraordinary was noticed. The last one
was born when she was thirty-five years old.
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