Further to THIS popular post, research suggests that morbid obesity is not just a phenomenon of current times.
The attributes the people in the following list have in common are their extreme level of obesity & the fact they are all deceased. The only British contender is a Mr G.Hopkins (at no.19) of Wales who lived in the 18th Century. He is said to have been brought to a London fair in a sturdy cart pulled by four teams of oxen, where an enterprising promoter displayed him in a stall alongside some prize hogs that were too fat to stand up.
The still living contender for the world’s most obese person is Manuel Uribe, a Mexican. Although since then he claims to have lost 990 lbs or, around half a ton.
In times past, their condition would have been described as gluttony, particularly in Christian societies where it was one of the 7 Deadly Sins.
Nowadays, morbid obesity, also known as clinically severe obesity, is an abnormal obesity defined as the condition of having body weight over 100 lbs over an ideal body weight or having a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher. The causes of morbid obesity are not well understood though, it usually comes about as the result of several factors, including diet, environment, genetics, metabolism and mental health.
The list below was complied by Dimensions Magazine:
Carol Yager (1960 - 1994) of Flint, MI; 5 ft 7 in, estimated to have weighed more than 1600 lbs at her peak. She had been fat since childhood. In 1993, she was measured at 1189 lbs when admitted to Hurley Medical Center, suffering from cellulitis. She lost nearly 500 lbs on a 1200-calorie diet, but most of that weight was thought to be fluid, and she regained all of it and more soon after being discharged. Her teenage daughter, a boyfriend, and a group of volunteers helped take care of her. Despite extravagant promises by diet maven Richard Simmons and talk-show host Jerry Springer, Yager received little practical assistance in return for her media exposure (though Springer continues to profit from her appearance on his show, having rebroadcast that episode at least four times). She was refused further hospitalization on the grounds that her condition was not critical, despite massive water retention and signs of incipient kidney failure, and these problems led to her death a few weeks later.
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Jon Brower Minnoch (1941 - 1983) of Bainbridge Island, WA; 6 ft 1 in, estimated as weighing “probably more than” 1400 lbs in 1979, at which point it took 13 people just to roll him over in bed. Minnoch, like many of the heaviest people, suffered from massive edema: his weight was augmented by at least 900 lbs of fluid at its peak. The former taxi driver had always been unusually heavy, reaching 400 lbs in 1963, 700 lbs in 1966, and 975 lbs in 1976, but he claimed to have been in no way handicapped by his size until a 500-calorie diet sapped his muscle strength and left him at the brink of death. Subsequent hospitalization brought him down to 476 lbs in 1981, mostly through the loss of 12 to 14 pounds of fluid per week. He was readmitted later that year after regaining 200 lbs in seven days. Although physicians at University Hospital in Seattle persisted in treating him with a 1,200-calorie diet, he weighed about 800 lbs at the time of his death. Other details of his physical condition were withheld from the press. Minnoch was the father of two children by his 110-lb wife, Jeannette.
Roselie Bradford (b. 1944) of Sellersville, PA; 5 ft 6 in, measured at 1053 lbs, but estimates that she weighed more than 1200 lbs at her peak two years earlier, a claim accepted by Guinness. Already over 300 lbs when she dropped out of college, Bradford became an exercise instructor, running seven miles three times a week, but continued her steady gain in weight. At 374 lbs she underwent an intestinal bypass operation, which caused serious complications. She was back to 350 lbs when she married her husband Bob in 1973, reached 500 lbs after the birth of her son, and as her body grew, so did her appetite. After contracting septicemia in the early 1980s, she spent most of the next decade in bed, eating - as much as 15,000 calories per day. It wasn’t unusual for her to put away three large pizzas in 40 minutes (washing them down with diet soda), then ask for dessert. At her peak, she measured eight feet wide, and took up two reinforced king-size beds. Her bustline measured over 100 inches, and her hips carried 200-lb “saddlebags” that hung down her thighs as far as her knees. “People would visit me and sit on the bed, not realizing they were sitting on part of me,” she recalled. When she fell out of bed, rescue workers used an inflatable cushion designed to right overturned cars to get her back into place. After being treated for symptoms of heart failure, she was eventually persuaded by Richard Simmons to embark on a five year diet, an experience she described as hellish. Tortured by hunger, by fast-food commercials, and by dreams in which she ate without limit, she nevertheless got down to under 300 pounds, setting a world’s record for weight loss. She later sued the Star tabloid for suggesting that she couldn’t have intimate relations with her husband at over half a ton.
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4.
Walter Hudson (1944? - 1991) of Hempstead, NY (born in Brooklyn, NY); 5 ft 10 in, measured at 1197 lbs (though the industrial scale broke in the process of weighing him). His chest was measured at 106 inches, his waist at 110. Hudson was discovered by the press in 1987, when he became wedged in the door of his bedroom and had to be cut free by rescue workers. An agoraphobic, he’d spent most of the past 27 years in bed. Hudson lived with his family, where his appetite was always indulged, and gave every indication that he was content with both his weight and his situation. “I just ate and enjoyed it,” he said. Despite his massive size, Newsday reported that he was extraordinarily healthy: his heart, lungs, and kidneys all functioned normally, while astonished doctors noted that his cholesterol and blood-sugar levels “showed the chemistry of a healthy 21-year-old.” Even so, activist-turned-nutritionist Dick Gregory managed to convince Hudson that losing weight was necessary to save his life. Gregory used Hudson to promote his Bahamian Diet, and claimed that his protegé lost at least 200 lbs (sometimes claiming as much as 800 lbs) under his care, but when Hudson refused to perform for the cameras on cue, Gregory summarily abandoned him. Other celebrities and diet promoters also claimed to have helped him lose massive amounts of weight, thoughNewsday noted that Hudson never seemed to look any thinner. (Gregory threatened to sue his rivals for $50 million.) Hudson himself gave conflicting stories, sometimes claiming to weigh as little as 480 lbs or as much as 1400. He only allowed himself to be weighed once. Hudson died in his sleep after years of intermittent starvation dieting, a few weeks after announcing wedding plans. His body was found to weigh 1125 lbs, and his massive coffin required twelve pallbearers.
Johnny Alee (1853 - 1887) of Carbon (now Carbonton) NC; said to have reached a maximum weight of 1132 lbs. Alee developed a ravenous appetite at the age of ten, and put on pounds so rapidly that by age 15 he could barely support his own weight. Grown men couldn’t get their arms around one of Alee’s thighs, and he could no longer squeeze through his own front door. Getting from his armchair to the dinner table, with plenty of help, was all the mobility he could manage. He was said to have died after falling through his cabin floor, and his postmortem weight was determined on the coal company scales. Guinness was never able to verify this story.
Mohamed Naaman (b. 1946) of Kenya; 6 ft, a tabloid story says he attained a maximum weight of 1055 lbs, though he managed to reduce to a mere 770 lbs, with an 87 1/2 inch waistline. “I’ve had to learn to drink tea without milk,” he says. Naaman is the father of 21 children by five wives.
Man, name withheld (ca. 1939 - ca. 1986), of New York State; just under 5 ft 7 in, 1050 lbs. His death was due to complications following a massive panniculectomy (”tummy tuck”) to remove fat tissue, performed at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park, NY. His peak weight was determined by adding the weight of the tissue removed by the operation (104 lbs) to the patient’s postmortem weight of 946 lbs. According to his physicians, he was healthy when he checked in, and his “past [medical] history was unremarkable except for extraordinary weight all his life.”
Carol Haffner (1936 - 1995) of Hollywood, FL; 1023 lbs. Haffner had been a regular at the Seminole Tribe Bingo parlor, where the operators bought a special chair to accomodate her girth. But after the death of her husband, depression and advancing weight kept her bedridden, and she spent her last five years in her trailer - leaving only once, with the assistance of a crew of firefighters, during a hurricane evacuation. Friends said she had been on the phone with talk shows and diet promoters, trying to finance a trip to a Boston- based obesity program, but she’d resisted hospitalization for her breathing difficulties, and died of heart failure two weeks after her 59th birthday.
12.
Mike Parteleno (b. 1958) of Struthers, OH; 6 ft (some sources say 6 ft 3 in), claimed a maximum of 1022 (or 1023) lbs while a spokesman for Dick Gregory’s Bahamian Diet. Prior to his association with Gregory, Parteleno claimed to weigh a mere 645 lbs, and was a popular favorite in belly-flop contests.
Mills Darden (1798 - 1857) of North Carolina; 7 ft 6 in, 1020 lbs. Darden was an acromegalic giant. His wife, who bore him three (some sources say five) children before her death in 1837, weighed only 98 lbs.
John Finnerty (b. 1952) of Amity Harbor, NY; 1012 lbs. He surfaced in the media only once, when firemen were called to take him to Brunswisk Hospital Center for treatment of bronchitis. “He was laying on a queen-size mattress, and rolls of fat just hung off both sides,” said the local fire chief. “He moved like a big bowl of Jello.” Finnerty was taken to the hospital on a flatbed truck, and was said to be responding well to treatment. His subsequent history is unreported.
Jerry Currant (b. 1938) of Los Angeles, CA; 6 ft 2 in, “more than” 1000 lbs. According to the tabloids, Currant was a gourmet chef who kept his weight under 600 lbs until 1983, but then began gaining steadily. Weighed on a meat scale in 1987, he topped 976 lbs, but remained mobile until September of 1988. In 1989 he was diagnosed with colon cancer by a visiting doctor, and transferred to a hospital through a hole cut in his apartment wall. He claimed to have no interest in losing weight.
Sylvanus “Hambone” Smith (1941 - 1997?) of Tifton, GA; 6 ft 2 1/2 in, aprox. 1000 lbs. Smith claimed to have weighed almost 16 lbs at birth, and 275 lbs by age 11. At his peak, he had a 103-in hip girth and 70-in thighs. He worked as a chef until his increasing weight left him confined to bed, then ran a pawnshop out of his home. Smith underwent a stomach-stapling operation in 1981 (at 602 lbs), served as a spokesman for Dick Gregory’s Bahamian Diet in 1987 (at 730 lbs), and was attempting yet another drastic weight loss program, sponsored by Geraldo Rivera, at the time of his death. He had also recently married 20-year-old Tammy Humphries, who weighed only 125 lbs. Smith was the father of one son and four daughters by a previous marriage. His children ranged in weight from 312 to 587 lbs at ages 22 to 30.
David Ron High (1953 - 1996) of Brooklyn, NY; 5 ft 10 in, aprox. 1000 lbs. High was touted as Dick Gregory’s biggest success story in 1986, when he reduced from 823 lbs to 427 lbs on a year-long fast supplemented by fruits and vegetables. (He lost three inches in height as well, shrinking from a peak of 6 ft 1 in.) High had been fat since childhood, and claimed he used to eat just one meal a day - all day. “The pizza shop loved me,” he recalled. “I was a great customer - and they even named a pizza after me. It was the only pizza in the world with spaghetti on it!” A decade after his graduation from Gregory’s International Health Institute, a team of city firemen needed a hydraulic lift remove the ailing High from the Brooklyn apartment where he’d spent the last five years. He was taken to the obesity center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he died after less than a month on another weight-loss program.
G. Hopkins (late 18th century?) of Wales; 980 lbs. Hopkins was said to have been brought to a London fair in a sturdy cart pulled by four teams of oxen, where an enterprizing promoter displayed him in a stall alongside some that prize hogs were too fat to stand up. The enormous Welshman astonished the paying crowds as much by his appetite as by his unparalleled bulk. After one stupendous meal, though nearly stuffed to bursting, Hopkins tried to grab a tasty morsel that was just out of reach and toppled off his bench. He landed on a nursing sow, killing the poor animal, and flattening her piglets beneath him “like salted herrings.” It took fifteen sturdy men to hoist him back onto his seat, and then only with great difficulty, for his stomach was packed so full of food that the skin around his middle was stretched tighter than a drumhead, and no one could get a grip on it. Hopkins’ weight (measured on a steelyard built for weighing fully-loaded wagons) is variously reported: this presumably authoritative figure is taken from a 19th-century medical encyclopedia.
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