at angels were so good and purethat they must be very thin. Everyone talked about how thin these angelswere, and how they could gather around in a persons head. This issuedeveloped a so-called miracle maidens. In the middle ages and later, there were miracle maidens whopurported to live on air, were fed by the fairies when nobody was there, ortoyed occasionally with such delicacies as the juice of a roasted raisin.People traveled for miles to see these living wonders. Most were frauds.but a few may well have had anorexia nervosa, a disorder which at thattime was not recognized (Daily et al, 5).There is another case of the disorder that occurred in 1599 when agirl in France had a minor illness. After three or more years ofrecovering from the disease, she was not convinced to eat. Although shewas self-starving, she would be active but cold and underfed. She becamethe "French Fasting Girl of Confolens."After a century passed by, the first medical definition of thedisorder was given by Richard Morton. Followed by the study of anorexianervosa of Alexander Lucas of the Mayo Clinic who discovered the"descriptive era." The descriptive era, being the first of five eras, tells us aboutanorexia nervosa and the way some doctors used to think of it. After thedoctors heard about this disease they made up their own opinion aboutanorexia, which are described by the next four eras. Beginning with thedescriptive era which was defined in 1689 in England as a condition of"nervous consumption," deliberate self-starvation caused by "an ill andmorbid state of the spirits." Morton describes the case of a 17-year-oldgirl that Lucas recounts in 1981. She fell into a total suppression ofher mind and her appetite began to fade away and her digestion to be bad.She felt that she needed to study harder and to her that was an excuse toskip meals. Although she was thin (could see her bones) she could not stopdieting. The girl did not wa...
