Abstract
Extract
Appetite and its Discontents is a fascinating and ambitious book that traces a two-hundred-year medical interest in the nature and function of appetite. The book is a welcome addition to historical literature on food and consumption, as it explores how the object of appetite was imagined, debated, and approached by western orthodox physicians and scientists, and how their ideas changed over time. The focus on medicine helps to address a limitation in the historiography regarding how shifting theories about appetite affected treatment and how individuals imagined their relationship with food.
Williams, a cultural historian and professor emerita at Oklahoma State University, brings to this subject a wealth of expertise in the history of gender, medical education, and food. Williams is not only interested in charting advancements in scientific knowledge in this book, but also the effects of bias, misunderstanding, and failure. Drawing on an impressive range of archival records, encyclopedias, and dictionaries, the author convincingly argues that those who studied appetite did so within rigid disciplinary boundaries, which separated the human actor from the science and ultimately delayed the reconciliation of allied knowledge.
Appetite and its Discontents is a fascinating and ambitious book that traces a two-hundred-year medical interest in the nature and function of appetite. The book is a welcome addition to historical literature on food and consumption, as it explores how the object of appetite was imagined, debated, and approached by western orthodox physicians and scientists, and how their ideas changed over time. The focus on medicine helps to address a limitation in the historiography regarding how shifting theories about appetite affected treatment and how individuals imagined their relationship with food.
Williams, a cultural historian and professor emerita at Oklahoma State University, brings to this subject a wealth of expertise in the history of gender, medical education, and food. Williams is not only interested in charting advancements in scientific knowledge in this book, but also the effects of bias, misunderstanding, and failure. Drawing on an impressive range of archival records, encyclopedias, and dictionaries, the author convincingly argues that those who studied appetite did so within rigid disciplinary boundaries, which separated the human actor from the science and ultimately delayed the reconciliation of allied knowledge.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | jrac011 |
| Pages (from-to) | 252-253 |
| Number of pages | 2 |
| Journal | The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 23 Mar 2022 |