Melting Moments: The Greasy Sources of Modern Perceptions of Fat

Abstract

In 1822 a rather bizarre satirical piece turned up in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.Occasioned by the recent challenge that Thomas Malthus had launched against the economic theories of Jean-Baptiste Say, a cheeky yet anonymous writer intervened with a report on a fictitious German economist named 'Professor Gunthred Bumgroschen', 1 whose theory of 'save-all-ism' represented a unique contribution to the debate.Upon a visit to England, it seems, the good professor had been struck by the size of its inhabitants, who took up more space on the streets than the slender Parisians across the Channel, prompting him to speculate on how the British might make the most economical use of their excess fat.Explaining how Bumgroschen considered the human corpse to be 'a valuable mass of materials' that 'ought not to be suffered to undergo a useless decomposition in a deep grave', this author proposed -with tongue firmly in cheek -that a reformed Britain would take better advantage of its corpulent dead.Bumgroschen's plan was to transform the nation's 'morbid accumulation' of fat -which had been 'a noxious mass to the individual while living' -into 'a valuable accumulation for posterity'.This would be accomplished by melting fat corpses to make soap and oil.Hygiene, both personal and moral, would be the two main benefits of Professor Bumgroschen's unorthodox plan.Those unfortunates who might have otherwise worn flannel or unlaundered clothes would now be able to don white muslin and clean shirts as a matter of course.So rich were British fat supplies that they would provide enough soap 'to keep the entire world clean', thus extending the virtues of hygiene beyond the island nation.There would even be enough to render the

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