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The diseases called chlorosis1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Irvine Loudon
Irvine Loudon*
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford
*
2Address for correspondence: Dr I. Loudon The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford 0X2 6PE.
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Synopsis

It is suggested that chlorosis, or the ‘green-sickness’, was not a single disease entity, but a name applied to at least two distinct conditions affecting young females in the past. The first (‘chloro-anaemia’) was a form of hypochromic anaemia possibly associated with gastric ulceration and poor diet. This form predominated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second (‘chloro-anorexia’) was a disorder of psychogenic origin resembling, but not identical to, anorexia nervosa. The latter form predominated in earlier periods but also occurred throughout the nineteenth century; it was also known as ‘the virgin's disease’ or ‘febris amatoria’. The ‘green’ of‘;green-sickness’ may originally have indicated innocence rather than a green colour of the skin.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 1984 , pp. 27 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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Footnotes

1

This paper is based on a lecture delivered at the Richard Hunter Memorial Meeting of the Section of the History of Medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine on 1 December 1982.

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