title: [The art of going hungry. Anorexia in medical texts in the late 19th century].
abstract: The essay analyzes representations of anorexia in French, English and German medical literature from 1870 to 1900, paying specific attention to rhetorical patterns. Unlike other nervous diseases, anorexia was considered a somatic illness. Rather than subjects, patients were regarded simply as skeletal bodies. Most medical case histories enact the transformation of an emaciated body into a nubile woman-slender, perhaps, but ready for marriage. The patients are described as studious girls who 'devour' literature instead of food. This metaphor is taken from etiology to therapy, when the so-called "Mastkur" in the sanatorium replaces 'enormous' amounts of literature with 'enormous' amounts of food to be eaten.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Diezemann
mesh_terms: D000855:Anorexia / Q000266:history*; D005060:Europe; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006815:Hunger; D013782:Textbooks as Topic / Q000266:history*