[The first bariatric surgery: the single procedure jejunoileal bypass (1954-1980)]

As obesity clearly becomes an epidemic disease, surgery has emerged as its only effective treatment. In the Western World, bariatric surgery is gaining favor, and the number of practitioners rises as rapidly as that of patients. But the recent success of an admittedly radical therapy tends to hide the fact that it faced considerable resistance in its early years, when many physicians considered the practice suspect, if not outright dangerous. In 1980, after 25 years of experimental research, and above all, after an initial attempt to introduce the practice into the clinic, obesity surgery, reducible to mainly one single procedure, the jejunoileal bypass, was widely abandoned. This general failure of a surgical technique, with the arguments that commanded it, is the subject of the present article.