The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis and the Problems of Puberty

ISBN-13: 9780415226622 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 208 str.

Helen King;King Helen

Opis

When does a young girl's behaviour become a disease? In sixteenth-century Europe, the disease of virgins, or green sickness, was seen as a common disorder affecting young unmarried girls. Its symptoms included weakness, dietary disturbance, lack of menstruation and most significantly, a change in skin colour. Understanding of the condition turned puberty and virginity into medical problems, and proposed to cure them by bloodletting, diet, exercise, and marriage. Helen King examines the origins and history of the disease, from its roots in the classical tradition to its extraordinary survival into the 1920s, despite changes in how the mechanisms of puberty and menstruation were understood, and enormous shifts in medical theories and technologies. From menstrual disturbance to eating disorders, from liver disease to blood disorder, the disease of virgins has been adjusted throughout its history to fit medical fashions. However, little changed in the underlying ideas about the female body, and the need to regulate the sexuality of young women. This compelling study poses a number of questions about the nature of disease itself and the relationship between illness, body image and what

Spis treści

Introduction, 1 The nature of green sickness, The humoral body, From green jaundice to green sickness, Green sickness and the disease of virgins, How green was green sickness? Green sickness and love sickness, 2 A new disease? The classical sources for the disease of virgins, Lange’s letter, Hippocratic virginity, The transmission of On the disease of virgins, What is a virgin? Other possible Hippocratic sources, ‘Some unknown monster’: the challenge of ‘new’ diseases, 3 The menstruating virgin, The Galenic physiology of menstruation, Alternative theories of menstruation, Letting blood in the Hippocratic and Galenic bodies, ‘Marriage is a sovereign cure’, The problem of puberty, The philosophy of puberty, Town and country, 4 Dietary factors, Food and the growth of the body, Pica, Green sickness as a liver disorder, Constipation 5 ‘The laboratory came to the rescue’: technology and chlorosis, The pulse, The stethoscope, Blood testing, Treatments, Shall we dance? Rest, Alternatives to orthodoxy, Women physicians and chlorosis, Conclusion

O autorze

Helen King