A lot of people can remember when anorexia and bulimia just weren’t a thing—nor was cutting—but now those are entrenched Western conditions which have spread to other places in the world, each with their own mythologies of meaning. To the sufferers they feel genuine. They are genuine. But they are also culturally created. They are made up.
While - however tempting it is to do so - one cannot with any certainty state that what Bell, Bynum et al refer to as “Holy Anorexia” is anorexia nervosa; Richard Morton is generally agreed to have given the first medical description of anorexia nervosa in 1689. In 1873 both Gull & Lasègue published on the subject, but it was Gull’s name for the condition (rather than Lasègue’s “hysterical anorexia”) that was adopted. Bulimia wasn’t considered a disorder in its own right until the 1970s, entering the DSM in 1980; but historians of medicine have noted clear descriptions of it in patient notes from the turn of the C20, though case numbers greatly increases from the 1970s onwards. There are known to be multiple genetic factors at play when it comes to anorexia (& the same is suspected of other EDs with a pattern of heritability, but research is ongoing there).
Of course responses to illness are culturally (& temporally) moderated. Windigo sounds like a form of POCD, but with cannibalism rather than paedophilia as the intrusive thought. Bulimia developing - or rather, exploding - how & when it did is worth looking at in terms of intergenerational trauma compounded by socio-cultural change making binging & purging possible; & the latter aspect would help determine when & where (& to whom) it spread.
Anorexia Nervosa is still subject to gross mischaracterisations that harm those with it & those who care about & for them - all the shallow stuff about just wanting to look like models, & horrendous stuff about being manipulative liars trying to remain children forever & force people to care for them. So the author claiming it’s all a modern Western creation rather grates. Just as Harvey discovering the circulation of the blood in 1628 doesn’t mean it wasn’t circulating before that; Gull’s 1873 coining of the term “anorexia nervosa” didn’t suddenly bring the disease into being.
T2 diabetes was (truly, not as might be someone’s subjective experience with AN) unheard of in children & adolescents in the UK until this century - over 20 years after the first paeds case was identified in the US - but there are now cases worldwide. Would the author count those as culturally created, I wonder? If not, why?
(Trying to write this literally took all night because MN kept falling over & I kept microsleeping - with some bonus myoclonic jerks that made me very glad I’ve a sturdy case on my phone & I think it is all in reasonable enough order to be readable but apologise if I’ve messed up a link; left a phrase unfinished; or repeated myself. I don’t dare try leaving it to post later because of the links & falling-over but my brain is jangling about inflicting something so inadequate-insufficient so I thought I should apologise-explain.)