Appetite and Its Discontents : Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950 / Elizabeth A. Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, Elizabeth A., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Appetite--Research--History.

Appetite.

Appetite--Research--History--19th century.

Appetite--Research--History--18th century.

Appetite--Research--History--20th century.

Appetite disorders--Research--History.

Appetite disorders.

Science--History.

Science.

Medicine--History.

Medicine.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Why do we eat? Is it instinct? Despite the necessity of food, anxieties about what and how to eat are widespread and persistent. In Appetite and Its Discontents, Elizabeth A. Williams explores contemporary worries about eating through the lens of science and medicine to show us how appetite—once a matter of personal inclination—became an object of science. Williams charts the history of inquiry into appetite between 1750 and 1950, as scientific and medical concepts of appetite shifted alongside developments in physiology, natural history, psychology, and ethology. She shows how, in the eighteenth century, trust in appetite was undermined when researchers who investigated ingestion and digestion began claiming that science alone could say which ways of eating were healthy and which were not. She goes on to trace nineteenth- and twentieth-century conflicts over the nature of appetite between mechanists and vitalists, experimentalists and bedside physicians, and localists and holists, illuminating struggles that have never been resolved. By exploring the core disciplines in investigations in appetite and eating, Williams reframes the way we think about food, nutrition, and the nature of health itself.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Introduction

Introduction to Part One

One. Why We Eat: The Ancient Legacy

Two. “False or Defective” Appetite in the Medical Enlightenment

Three. Human and Animal Appetite in Natural History and Physiology

Introduction to Part Two

Four. Perils and Pleasures of Appetite at 1800: Xavier Bichat and Erasmus Darwin

Five. The Physiology of Appetite to 1850

Six. Extremes and Perplexities of Appetite in Clinical Medicine

Introduction to Part Three

Seven. The Drive to Eat in Nutritional Physiology

Eight. The Psychology of Ingestion: Appetite in Physiological and Animal Psychology

Nine. Peripheral or Central? Disordered Eating in Clinical Medicine

Introduction to Part Four

Ten. Psyche, Nerves, and Hormones in the Physiology of Ingestion

Eleven. Appetite and the Nature-Nurture Divide: Eating Behavior in Psychology and Ethology

Twelve. Somatic, Psychic, Psychosomatic: The Medicine of Troubled Appetite

Epilogue. Appetite after 1950

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226693187

022669318X

OCLC:

1141500049