Historical continuities and discontinuities between religious and medical interpretations of extreme fasting

Abstract

Taking anorexia nervosa as an example, the attempt to write a history of a syndrome is defended on methodological grounds. Different approaches are considered: intellectual histories of concepts, histories of syndromes and the reconstruction of cultural influences on a syndrome. An early description of two cases of anorexia nervosa that have been rediagnosed retrospectively is presented and the intellectual and institutional context which made it possible is reconstructed. This early description represents a rare link between religiously-inspired forms of extreme fasting and the secular forms of fasting which have been identified by medical writers as anorexia nervosa. Finally, consideration is given to the influence of the Church and the degree to which the process of secularization affected the differences in the interest taken in extreme fasting by medicine in France, Germany and Italy.