2022, Number 6
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Rev Fac Med UNAM 2022; 65 (6)
From Chlorosis to Iron Deficiency Anemia. The Historical Evolution of a Disease
Matadamas ZC, Hernández JJM
Language: Spanish
References: 16
Page: 34-42
PDF size: 1054.14 Kb.
ABSTRACT
Chlorosis was a very frequent disease in medical literature
from the 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century;
For more than four centuries, this disease, also known as
“green sickness” or “virgin disease” (morbus virgineus), occupied
a predominant place in medical consultation and reached
“epidemic” proportions in the eighteenth century and
XIX (it was the most frequent blood disease in this century),
transcending the field of medicine itself, with important social
implications and influence on European painting and
literature of those years. For several centuries there was no
agreement regarding its etiology, and it was not until the development
of hematology that it was considered a frequent
microcytic-hypochromic anemia in young women. When
the mystery of its etiology was clarified, a new “mystery”
occurred: its sudden disappearance from medical nosology
and literature in the first decades of the last century. In this
paper we review the historical evolution of a disease and the
social construction of a concept of disease.
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