Key segments of Richard Morton's classic thesis on "nervous consumption" (Phthisiologia: Or a Treatise of Consumptions, 1694), the first well documented account of anorexia nervosa, are described and transcribed.
Richard Morton is generally regarded as the first to describe the condition now known, following William Gull's observations of 1874, as anorexia nervosa. Morton was born in Suffolk, England, in 1637 and after a checkered career as priest, and then physician, died in 1698. His biography has been the subject of a recent paper by Silverman (1983). Morton's work is widely referred to but few can have read the original. We hope therefore that this paper will be of some historic interest.
Morton's account of anorexia nervosa was published first in Latin in 1689 in his treatise entitled Phthisiologia: Sue exercitationes de Phthisi. In order to pre-empt "false and unintelligible translation" an English version appeared in 1694. It is personal reading of this work, Phthisiologia: Or a Treatise of Consumptions which forms the basis of this paper.
Morton began with a commendable example to his modern counterparts. He stressed the need for accurate definitions of the conditions to be described and then provided these. "Consumption in general is a wasting of the Muscular parts of the Body," he wrote. Morton recognized two types, "original" and "symptomatical." The latter "has a mediate dependence upon some other preceding disease." The management,