Anorexia nervosa in 19th century America

Compared with late 19th century publications in Great Britain and France, medical writers in the United States of the same era apparently had less interest in anorexia nervosa as a distinct clinical syndrome. A review of the literature of that period shows that American physicians very rarely referred to the "new" syndrome described in 1873 by Gull and Lasègue. Except for some short or oblique references, the first explicit clinical description of a case of anorexia nervosa by an American author (James Hendrie Lloyd) did not appear until 1893. The controversy about "fasting girls" and the all-dominating diagnosis of neurasthenia may explain the delay in the American interest in the new disorder. The present article documents and discusses this hitherto little known fragment in the history of medicine and psychiatry.