Historically Speaking: Anorexia’s Ancient Roots And Present Toll

The deadly affliction, once called self-starvation, has become much more common during the confinement of the pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal

February 18, 2022

Two years ago, when countries suspended the routines of daily life in an attempt to halt the spread of Covid-19, the mental health of children plunged precipitously.

Two years ago, when countries suspended the routines of daily life in an attempt to halt the spread of Covid-19, the mental health of children took a plunge. One worrying piece of evidence for this was an extraordinary spike in hospitalizations for anorexia and other eating disorders among adolescents, especially girls between the ages of 12 and 18, and not just in the U.S. but around the world. U.S. hospitalizations for eating disorders doubled between March and May 2020. England’s National Health Service recorded a 46% increase in eating disorder referrals by 2021 compared with 2019. Perth Children’s hospital in Australia saw a 104% increase in hospitalizations and in Canada, the rate tripled.

Anorexia nervosa has a higher death rate than any other mental illness. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, 75% of its sufferers are female. And while the affliction might seem relatively new, it has ancient antecedents.

As early as the sixth century B.C., adherents of Jainism in India regarded “santhara,” fasting to death, as a purifying religious ritual, particularly for men. Emperor Chandragupta, founder of the Mauryan dynasty, died in this way in 297 B.C. St. Jerome, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., portrayed extreme asceticism as an expression of Christian piety. In 384, one of his disciples, a young Roman woman named Blaesilla, died of starvation. Perhaps because she fits the contemporary stereotype of the middle-class, female anorexic, Blaesilla rather than Chandragupta is commonly cited as the first known case.

The label given to spiritual and ascetic self-starvation is anorexia mirabilis, or “holy anorexia,” to differentiate it from the modern diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. There were two major outbreaks in history. The first began around 1300 and was concentrated among nuns and deeply religious women, some of whom were later elevated to sainthood. The second took off during the 19th century. So-called “fasting girls” or “miraculous maids” in Europe and America won acclaim for appearing to survive without food. Some were exposed as fakes; others, tragically, were allowed to waste away.

But, confusingly, there are other historical examples of anorexic-like behavior that didn’t involve religion or women. The first medical description of anorexia, written by Dr. Richard Morton in 1689, concerned two patients—an adolescent boy and a young woman—who simply wouldn’t eat. Unable to find a physical cause, Morton called the condition “nervous consumption.”

A subject under study in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, 1945. WALLACE KIRKLAND/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/SHUTTERSTOCK

Almost two centuries passed before French and English doctors accepted Morton’s suspicion that the malady had a psychological component. In 1873, Queen Victoria’s physician, Sir William Gull, coined the term “Anorexia Nervosa.”

Naming the disease was a huge step forward. But its treatment was guided by an ever-changing understanding of anorexia’s causes, which has spanned the gamut from the biological to the psychosexual, from bad parenting to societal misogyny.

The first breakthrough in anorexia treatment, however, came from an experiment involving men. The Minnesota Starvation Experiment, a World War II –era study on how to treat starving prisoners, found that the 36 male volunteers exhibited many of the same behaviors as anorexics, including food obsessions, excessive chewing, bingeing and purging. The study showed that the malnourished brain reacts in predictable ways regardless of race, class or gender.

Recent research now suggests that a genetic predisposition could count for as many as 60% of the risk factors behind the disease. If this knowledge leads to new specialized treatments, it will do so at a desperate time: At the start of the year, the Lancet medical journal called on governments to take action before mass anorexia cases become mass deaths. The lockdown is over. Now save the children.

A shorter version appeared in The Wall Street Journal

Historically Speaking: The American Invention of Summer Camp

Since 1876, children have looked forward to their long vacation as a time to build friendships and character.

July  23, 2020

The Wall Street Journal

Hello Muddah, hello Faddah,/Here I am at Camp Granada…

With more than half of the country’s 14,000 summer camps temporarily closed because of Covid-19, millions of children are missing out on experiences that have helped to shape young Americans for nearly 150 years.

I went hiking with Joe Spivey/He developed poison ivy…

Hayley Mills plays twins who meet at summer camp in ‘The Parent Trap’ (1961).
PHOTO: EVERETT COLLECTION

The idea that a spell in the great outdoors builds character has ancient roots. The Spartans practiced a particularly rigorous form: When a warrior-in-training reached the age of 12, he was sent into the wilderness for a year. Those who gave up were barred from attaining full citizenship.

And the head coach wants no sissies/ so he reads to us from something called Ulysses…

But the modern summer camp can be traced to the Transcendentalist movement of the 1830s and ‘40s. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were ardent proselytizers for learning to live at one with nature. Their message resonated with the environmentalist Joseph T. Rothrock, who founded the country’s first sleep-away camp, the North Mountain School of Physical Culture, in 1876 near Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Rothrock believed he could take “weakly boys” from the city and rehabilitate them into healthy young men.

Ernest Balch was moved by ‘the miserable condition of boys from well-to-do families” who spent their summers living in hotels, rather than out in nature. He was still a Dartmouth College student when he founded Camp Chocorura in New Hampshire in 1881. Its emphasis on self-reliance and character-building became the blueprint for other summer camps.

You remember Jeffrey Hardy /They’re about to organize a searching party…

By 1918 there were over 1,000 in the U.S. Charles W. Eliot, a former president of Harvard, went so far as to declare in 1922 that summer camp was “the most important step in education that America has given the world.”

This would have been news to Britain, where Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout movement, had been running his own summer camp since 1907. But American camps were unique in their diversity, with options for every faith and political creed. The oldest camp for Black children, Camp Atwater, was founded in North Brookfleld, Mass., in 1921, at a time when summer camping was segregated; it is still going strong today.

Take me home, oh Muddah, Faddah…

Summer camp retained a wholesome image for decades. Films such as “The Parent Trap” (1961), starring Hayley Mills as separated twin sisters who are unexpectedly reunited at a summer camp, focused on innocent fun. But darker themes were coming. The “Friday the 13th” franchise, launched in 1980, has a higher body count than many war films, with much of the carnage taking place at the fictional Camp Crystal Lake.

Wait a minute, it’s stopped hailing /Guys are swimming, guys are sailing…

But summer camps continued to grow. By the mid-2010s, according to the American Camp Association, they were an $18 billion industry serving 14 million campers every year. The disappointment of missing camp this summer will hopefully make it even more joyful to return next year. As Allan Sherman’s beloved satire concludes: Muddah, Faddah, kindly disregard this letter.