Low Carb diets go back much further than Mackarness, starting with Jean Brilliant-Savarin in 1825, William Banting 1863 (can find his Letter on Corpulence as the first popular media diet book on-line). Gary Taubes has a good chapter in Why We Get Fat ... A Historical Digression on the Fattening Carbohydrate. I believe Dr. Atkins was most influenced by Dr. Alfred Pennington's study with Dupont executives/Cornell Labs. In his first book he attributes the basis of his diet to various studies on carb restriction...it was the common advice until the 1950s. He just popularized it with easy to follow rules, in a well-written book following up a Vogue magazine article. The history of Dr. Westman's clinical study based on Dr. Atkins is also in that chapter or the following one.