From Fasting Saints To Anorexic Girls

Down the centuries, self-starvation has taken many morbid guises - in the extremes of religious fasting and the abstinence of saints, in hunger strikes, in the exhibition of living skeletons and hunger artists, and in the fate of melancholics, hysterics, the possessed and bewitched. This history culminates in the 19th century with the labelling of anorexia nervosa, a condition which attracts many theories and explanations and vast literature, in the course of which a medical curiosity has been transformed into a fashionable disease. This account is of both clinical and historical importance and should interest anyone concerned with the interactions of culture and the individual.

Down the centuries, self-starvation has taken many morbid guises - in the extremes of religious fasting and the abstinence of the saints; in hunger strikes; in the exhibition of iving skeletons and hunger artists; in the fate of melancholica, hystericsm the possessed and bewitched. This strange story culminates in the 19th century labelling of anorexia nervosa, a condition which has since attracted a host of theories and explanations and a vast literature, the course of which a medical curiosityhas been transformed into a modern disease. In the history of psyhiatry this is a remarkable account, of great clinical ad historical importance, which will interest anyone concerned with the interaction of culture and the individual. Walter Vandereycken, an international authority on the research and treatment of eating disorders, is Professor of Psychiatry at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Ron Van Deth is a psychologist in Leiden, the Netherlands.