Erendida Historical ContextAnorexia and Bulimia Nervosa may sound new, but this goes way back in our history. In the Roman Empire they practice vomiting during lengthy banquets in order to eat more food and not feel full.( Culturally-based fasting as a trigger for eating disorders. (2014, January 29).Examiner.com. Retrieved May 5, 2014, from http://www.examiner.com/article/culturally-based-fasting-as-a-trigger-for-eating-disorders) Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa did not stared at the same time. People think that anorexia and bulimia nervosa are the same thing, but they are really different. Anorexia nervosa was discovered before bulimia. Anorexia was first studied by an English physician named Richard Morton, but at that time it was call “nervosa consumption.” The first medical documentation was that of Morton in 1689. When Richard studied the first case of nervosa consumption it was on a 17-year-old woman; her systems were cold skin temperature, lack of sleep, pale skin, and extreme weight loss. In the end, the patient died. Richard Morton saw this illness as an individual physiological illness. He hypothesized that the illness existed only in a person’s mind. Culturally-based fasting as a trigger for eating disorders. (2014, January 29).Examiner.com. Retrieved May 5, 2014, from http://www.examiner.com/article/culturally-based-fasting-as-a-trigger-for-eating-disorders
People that have anorexia nervosa starve themselves and won't eat for a long period of time. Anorexics starve themselves when they already have a thin body. People with anorexia have a body weight that is 15% or more below recommended levels. A lot of girls that have anorexia even stop having their menstrual cycle. On the other hand, people with bulimia eat large amounts of foods but after they start to feel guilty, they vomit everything that they eat. Religion and culture have a lot to do with eating disorders and most of the time we don’t know it. Our culture is always showing us that the perfect people are the ones who are thin and that the ones that are beautiful are the ones that thin as well. You can't walk in a store without seeing a magazine that encourages weight loss, or feeling guilty after every meal. In some religions people do fasting, that is when in a religion people stop eating for a number of days. They did that because they think that for that time they would clean themselves and they would be closer to god. In Christianity women that starved themselves were thought to be more close to God and highly esteemed. But soon the Catholic Church saw that people were still starving themselves when the fasting time was over and people thought that the people that were still not eating were witches and that had to burn them at the stake. A lot of people that were anorexics were considers witches and were killed. Cowley, R., Gibson, D., & Sewell, C. (n.d.). History of Eating Disorders. History of Eating in the United States. Retrieved May 2, 2014, from http://historyofeating.umwblogs.org/history-of-eating-disorders/ |
Karina Historical ContextPeople tend to confuse Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa, but they are both different. They were both discovered at a different time. Anorexia consists of restriction of not eating at all or eating very small quantities of food. Bulimia Nervosa consists of one eating large amounts of food and then vomiting it all out. Doing either of those do get you skinny and extreme loss weight; both being a threat to your health. You may think that this eating disorders have not been around long, but they have existed for about 3 centuries with 30 years.
Eating Disorders took place in 1689 and was 1st recognized and studied in England. It existed in many parts of the world. Many religious groups such as Islamic, Catholic, Jewish, Christian, etc practice fasts for 30 days. People observed each other and once the fast was over, some individuals would keep fasting; they starve themselves from eating food. Now fasting purpose was to purify and cleanse from sins, but other people used it as a way to strict away from food. They kept fasting because they were self-conscious about their physical with the goal of reaching and satisfying themselves to become thin. At this point in time if you were discovered fasting after it was over you were considered Satanist. You were considered a witch or wizard. Therefore people killed people with an eating disorder because they saw it as a threat. You can also infer religion beliefs and customs had a lot to do with people with eating disorders. Other people thought you were a psycho because they didn’t know it was an individual’s mental, psychological illness. Richard Morton was the first one who recognized it and first experimented that Eating Disorders was one individual’s mental illness. |