A German doctor prescribed low carb for obesity and gout back in 1882

TILvids · Oct 25, 2026

Wilhelm Ebstein was a German doctor born in 1836, and most people only know his name from a rare heart defect called Ebstein's anomaly. What he wrote about food is the part I find really interesting.

In 1882 he published a book on obesity and how to treat it, and his advice was to cut back on bread, potatoes and sugar and eat more fat with moderate protein. A couple of years later he used that same low-carb, high-fat approach for people dealing with gout.

He didn't know anything about ketosis or insulin resistance back then. He just paid attention to what happened to his patients when the…