History of Anorexia

The History of Anorexia is old. In ancient Rome during the period of feasting, people used to vomit food they ate. They even had particular place for it called “vomitorium”. There is a lot of remembrance about these events in ancient Rome books. Roman emperors Vitellius and Claudius were anorexic.

Some other cultures like ancient Egyptian culture purged themselves every month for three days in series, using clysters and emetics to preserve health. They considered that human diseases come from food.

In Europe during the middle ages purgation was used like a medicine for many diseases and was advocated by middle age physicians.

In ancient Arabia and Greece there were also descriptions in texts of purging and bingeing.

But all these ancient practices of purging and bingeing are alike but not the same as what we call “anorexia” now. There was no proof of a drive for thinness that is the obvious attribute in all modern anorexics; in fact skinny shape was not the normal shape for women.

From the proofs that have been reported it is clear that anorexia nervosa as it is presented now was an unknown disease until the late 20th century.

Anorexia Nervosa means “nervous loss of appetite”. This meaning is not on the whole right, since it is based on misunderstanding. The people who bear from Anorexia Nervosa do not at all have lack of need to eat; they are only afraid of putting on weight. Therefore, the term “self starving” would be more appropriate, or even better expressed “weightfobia”.

Anorexia Nervosa is very general today, than a century ago. There are different reasons for this:

• The thin principle has become “fashionable”; an ideal which almost all type’s of media supports. This leads people to think that this is the proper way to look, and the right way to live their life. Many people try various slimming methods, one after the other, and inappropriate slimming methods is the most regular factor which starts an eating disorder.
• Recent technology helps us so much that we do not need to apply our bodies physically as much as before. Most work is performed in a sitting position.
• The media also concentrates a lot on sport and exercise, which can lead to tremendous focus on one’s body, and on an almost unapproachable body ideal.

Eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa have shown to happen more commonly in countries where these reasons are more noticeable in the daily life.

Anorexia Nervosa was described for the first time in 1684, but it was not identified and described with it’s diagnosis until 1870. The birth of the new illness was not only related to the new way to look at medicine, but also an effect of the changes in the society, and on the new model for young women. The history of Anorexia Nervosa is partially an effect of the culture that we live in, and partially an effect of the social structure in our society.

Although Anorexia Nervosa has been well-known from long time by psychologists and other behavioral scientists, at the end of the twentieth century the common public first got to know about the disease and its nature. It was not until the start of the 1970s, that the American media began to write about Anorexia Nervosa. In American media there were stories in 1974 about how young women refused to eat, but without really illumination how serious this illness could be. In 1984, during the American TV-show “Saturday night live”, the host started to joke about the disease and showed a proposal of how an anorectic cookbook could look like. Today, most of us have realized how serious is the disease and its processes.

After almost three decades of clinical research of Anorexia Nervosa in 1978, Hilde Bruch the psychologist printed and published a book about the disease. The book called as the golden cage is written on 70 real cases, where mostly young women’s testimonials are included. At the time when the book was published, Bruch claimed that the disease was so common that it had become a big problem in most American colleges and universities.

In 1970s a study based on clinical research showed that Anorexia Nervosa is a disease linked to the culture that we live in. This means that the disease is very common in the Western world, and a lot is depending on the various factors which have been described above.

From the 1980s until today there has been a great amount of literature published about Anorexia Nervosa (and about Bulimia Nervosa, which is a disease closely related to Anorexia Nervosa), and many scientists have published research on this disorder. Today, there are a lot of clinics around the world, with specialized psychiatrists and psychologists, in order to help women and men that suffer from Anorexia Nervosa.