Comments On Corpulency Background

AM Broadley’s edition of Comments on Corpulency is an example of the popular 19th-century practice of extra-illustration, where a published book is greatly enlarged by the addition of a variety of materials including original artwork, engravings, correspondence, pamphlets and clippings. In this particular instance, Broadley enlarged William Wadd’s small, 170-page Comments on Corpulency to a large four-volume folio set containing well over 650 pages. While most of the illustrations are tangentially related to the text, bearing more directly on social and political issues of the time, they nonetheless provide an amusing, interesting insight into the popular representation of obesity in the 18th and 19th centuries.

English surgeon William Wadd (1776-1829) was educated at Merchant Taylor's School and St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. In addition to this work on obesity, he published a number of treatises on surgery and medical history. Wadd is perhaps best known for his anecdotal work Nugae Chirurgicae (1824), a miscellaneous collection of biographies and stories of the history of medicine and surgery in England. A talented artist, Wadd created illustrations for all of his works. Wadd died in a carriage accident on August 29, 1829, at the age of 53.

Alexander Meyrick Broadley (1847-1916) was an English lawyer, journalist, historian, and collector of art and antiquities. After qualifying for the Bar in 1869, Broadley practiced law in India and later in Cairo, Egypt. While in North Africa, Broadley represented the Bey of Tunis against the French and defended Egyptian nationalist Col. Ahmed Orabi (“Arabi Pasha”) after his surrender to the British forces in 1882. Partly as a consequence of representing the Crown’s enemies, Broadley's legal and business career was filled with controversy. He was also a journalist and author of some note, serving as Special Correspondent of the London Times in Tunis and Egypt during 1880-1882. Broadley wrote two books about his experiences in Tunis and Egypt, as well as other works on diverse subjects, including: Napoleon, Lord Nelson, Ben Johnson, Freemasonry, bookplates, and autographs. After his retirement from the law and return to England, Broadley devoted a significant amount of time to the hobby of creating extra-illustrated books.

Broadley's interest in obesity can be attributed to his personal struggle with weight loss most of his adult life. At the age of 27 he survived a serious attack of typhoid fever, followed by an abnormal increase in weight. After Broadley’ death in 1916, his enormous personal library—including 600 extra-illustrated volumes—was dispersed through a series of five auction sales. Broadley's collection of Napoleonic books, autographs, and engravings was at the time considered one of the finest Napoleon collections ever assembled. Many of his extra-illustrated sets of books have since been donated to libraries and museums.

Nutritionist and author Dr. William J. Darby, Chairman and Professor of the Department of Biochemistry here at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, who served as honorary curator of the Eskind Library Historical Collection until his death in 2001, purchased Broadley's four-volume set of William Wadd's Comments on Corpulency from the Argosy Bookstore in New York sometime during the 1950s. He donated this unique work to the Eskind Biomedical Library in 1995.