ABSTRACT
What is the ‘disease of virgins’? The simple answer to this question is that it was a historical condition involving lack of menstruation, dietary disturbances, altered skin colour and general weakness once thought to affect, almost exclusively, young girls at puberty. This answer may seem to side-step other questions which should come first: for example, what do we mean by ‘a’ disease? Were all the girls diagnosed as suffering from this disease really ill with the same condition? Were they ill at all? When trying to understand a disease which gripped the imaginations of people in the past, is the investigation over if we can match up the symptoms listed in our sources to a single named disease recognised today? Or is this when the role of the historian really begins? As Irvine Loudon has made admirably clear, the problem of retrospective diagnosis’ consists of attempting to reconcile conflicting evidence for the sake of a single disease hypothesis: the attempt is misguided and doomed to failure’ (1984: 32).1
