The surgical treatment of morbid obesity has undergone astonishing growth since its inception thirty years ago. The medical profession has long been aware of the discouraging intractability of morbid obesity to all forms of conservative management, and it is only recently that physicians have come to realize that surgery can provide very real palliation for the morbidly obese patient. Surgery does not attack the underlying etiology of morbid obesity, whatever it may be, but exerts its effect indirectly either by effecting a calorie loss through intestinal shunting, or by calorie deprivation...