Description
Funk & Wagnalls Company, Published 1930. Hardcover, viii, 336 pp.; 19 x 13 cm; Second Printing (October 1930), as stated on the copyright page; illustrated with black-and-white line drawings throughout.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Good condition with an Acceptable dust jacket. Dark red cloth-covered boards with gilt-stamped title and author on the front board and spine; gilt is bright and clear. Mild shelf wear to the cloth. Binding is tight and square. Mild toning to endpapers and text-block pages, otherwise clean, with occasional light creasing. Original retail bookseller's sticker of Meier & Frank Co. (the prominent Portland, Oregon department store, 1857 to 2006) on the rear pastedown, with the original $2.00 retail price stamped beside it ("LB 2.00") and matching the price printed on the jacket flap, indicating this copy was sold new through the Meier & Frank Book Department circa 1930. Dust jacket has several chips and tears (each 1.5 inches or less), some repaired on the verso with old tape that shows through, moderate toning and mild soiling and scuffing, some color loss along edges and spine, but jacket remains complete and present on all panels. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover.A popular guide to weight reduction by Dr. Luella E. Axtell, an early-twentieth-century female physician who developed her program over eighteen years of private practice and personally reduced seventy-five pounds following her own plan. Axtell advocates sensible calorie counting, real food (with chapters on protein, vitamins, minerals, water, and fuel foods), cookery tricks for cutting calories without starvation, exercise (walking, swimming, mat work, breathing), and the avoidance of patent-medicine "reducing" drugs, which she explicitly warns against. Charmingly illustrated with Art Deco line drawings of stout figures, anthropomorphic vegetables, and dancing menu cards. A representative artifact of the calorie-counting consensus in pre-war American popular medicine, and of the still-uncommon presence of women M.D.s as authors of trade health books.Contents: Why Be Fat?; Fallacies About Reducing; The Weigh and the Way of It; Food Families (A Table Full of Foods); Vital Foods (Protein, Minerals, Vitamins, Water); Those Fat-Makers, Fuel Foods (Sugars, Fats, Starches, Cellulose); Fuels in Figures (Tables of Calory Values); Tricks in Cookery; Menus and Original Recipes (Healthful Reducing Meals for Women, Healthful Reducing Meals for Men, Reducing Meals of Plain Foods, Simplest Meals of Adequate Food); Exercise (How and Why; Walking; Breathing Exercises; Swimming; Warming-Up Exercises; Mat Exercises; Programs); Accessories and Sidelights (Heat and Cold; Massage; Feet and Limbs, Gait; Mental Attitudes); Question-Box; Achievement (Resume of Plan); Maintenance Diet and Menus; Index.