Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease - Hardcover

Historian Brumberg (Cornell) has produced an excellent study of anorexia nervosa from a Medieval form of sacred possession, to a Victorian curiosity, to a modern condition that experts cannot establish as a disease, neurosis, or socially induced condition. Using historical, medical, literary, and popular sources, Brumberg examines the role of healing professionals in defining the condition; the bourgeois values which demanded that upwardly mobile women appear unfit for productive and reproductive work; and the struggle for moral authority over 19th-century fasting girls that evolved between men of science and religion. Superbly written, meticulously researched, thoughtfully illustrated, and highly recommended for most libraries. Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id.
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