Tag: Anorexia Nervosa
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A picture of ill-health: The illness of Elizabeth Siddal
Emily BoyleDublin, Ireland It is difficult to think of Ophelia, one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters, without bringing to mind the famous depiction of her by John Everett Millais. In Hamlet, the sensitive and fragile Ophelia is driven mad by grief after her lover Hamlet rejects her and kills her father Polonius. After very poetically…
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Shadow self
Anna Byrd Los Angeles, California, United States Rice Bowl. Photo by Anna Byrd, 2017. When was I was twenty-three years old and weighed ninety-eight pounds, I thought I was fat. I wanted to look like a model, except my hair was falling out, I was bleeding from my nose and ears in my sleep,…
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The elimination game
Kelley Yuan Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Anorexia nervosa. Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière. “Un cas d’anorexie hysterique” 1900. Xylophone ribs and sunken cheeks. A body desperate for food paired with a mind determined to starve. Here lies anorexia nervosa’s cruel paradox, of a body betrayed and a brain allowing it to waste away. The protest…
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Body matters
Grace Lucas Cambridge, UK Thinking from the ground up I had this friend once. She was around for a long time – years. I do not remember the first time I met her, but suddenly she was there, omnipresent. She was thrilling and intoxicating to be with, and made me feel high, light, and…
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Charcot and his “grandes hysteriques”
Perhaps no other physician in history has been associated with more diseases than Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893). He was one of the greatest neurologists of the 19th century, instrumental in developing the systematic neurological examination based on correlating clinical features observed during life with changes found at autopsy. At the Salpêtrière, the large hospital and asylum…