Mr. Banting was not happy with this state of affairs. He struggled for years to take off weight. He tried everything that the medical profession of that day would either sanction or not positively prohibit. He tried steaming, spas, starvation diets; he subjected himself to leeching and purging; he tried exercise, which must have taken superhuman effort in a man of his proportions. In 1862 William Banting was a discouraged-and still enormously heavy-gentleman in his sixties, who knew a great deal about the prevailing ideas in weight reduction-and knew that none worked for him.