Anorexic Women Were Sometimes Put in Mental Asylums
Not all of these anorexic women were treated as miracles from God. Many families could see it for what it really was- a disease that was preventing them from eating. At the time, no one had a medical explanation for what was going on. And many doctors decided that self-starvation was due to “hysteria” or a purely mental illness. The majority of women were taken care of by their families at home. But not all of them were so lucky. Because of the seemingly irrational thoughts that go behind fasting, some of these women were put into mental asylums when they refused to eat for prolonged periods of time. In the 1860’s, rectal feeding became a popular method in Germany to force-feed insane patients who refused to eat. Unfortunately, this was a violent and torturous method that did little to actually help the nutrition of the patient.