AUTOMATIC FAT-REDUCER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3434, 27 January 1912, Page 9

AUTOMATIC FAT-REDUCER.

ELECTRIC TREATMENT FOR OBESE PATIENTS. Good news for fat people is contained in. an announcement now made. A fatreducing machine, which automatically exercises the muscles of adipose tissue, lias been added to the physician’s already large'list of electro-therapeutic appliances. The apparatus, which has just been completed by a famous London firm of electrical instrument makers, on the lines suggested by Professor Bergonia, of Bordeaux, supplies interrupted currents of various strength to different parts of the body, causing the muscular groups affected to contract and relax at fixed intervals without anv effort on,the patient’s part. On a large switchboard are three main switches controlling the amount of current which passes-through the patient’s body. There are also twelve separate switches which control the amount of current reaching the six pairs of ‘‘applicators.” These are large brass plates lined with cotton wool and shaped to fit the various parts of the body. They are placed over each fore-arm, shoulder, calf, and thigh, and the right and left sides of the abdomen, and back. During the treatment the patient lies on a copper-lined chair, the panels of which are connected to the main instrument by insulated wires. The machine was invented by Professor Bergonia a year or two ago as a means of artificially exercising the muscles of fat people whose hearts are took weak to allow of vigorous natural exercise—the best of •all weight-reducers. With 40-minute “doses” of current twice a week for two or three months Professor Bergonia says a medical correspondent of the “Daily Mail,” claims to. have reduced the weight of over-stout _ patients by one-third. The instrument is to be sent to the consulting-room of a well-known Harley Street physician who specialises in the treatment of obese patients.