Am J Psychiatry 1990; 147:263-268
Copyright © 1990 by American Psychiatric Association
A description of eating disorders in 1932
A Stunkard
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia 19104-3246.
This article consists of a shortened and annotated translation of a paper
on "An Interesting Oral Symptom Complex and Its Relationship to Addiction"
by M. Wulff of Berlin, which was delivered before the German Psychoanalytic
Society on April 12, 1932. The article describes four cases of an eating
disorder in women that was characterized by binge eating, hypersomnolence,
apathetic depression, and disparagement of the body image. After the eating
binges, all four patients manifested periods of fasting, and two of the
three, about whom such information is available, vomited. Translations of
large excerpts of the case histories are presented together with a summary
of Wulff's discussion.
