Chlorosis, anaemia, and anorexia nervosa.

For nearly four centuries a disease known as chlorosis, the green sickness or the virgin's disease, was commonly recognised. There are many references to it in literature and art from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries' -3 and numerous clinical descriptions by physicians. Until the middle of the nineteenth century there was, however, no general agreement on the cause of the disease; then, after the development of haematology it was believed to be a form of hypochromic anaemia confined to young women. When the mystery of its aetiology seemed to have been solved, however, it was succeeded by another mystery: chlorosis, which had reached "epidemic proportions" throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,' suddenly began to decline at the beginning of this century. Within two decades it had to all intents and purposes disappeared.9 Although various explanations were offered for its disappearance (usually along the lines of improvements in diet and living conditions) Witts remarked