ABSTRACT
The revived theory of the liver as the origin of the symptoms of chlorosis, and the consequent extension of the category to women of all ages and even to men, was not the end of the story. As the anatomical structures of the body continued to be studied, even chlorosis in girls was sub-divided into new categories. For example, Ashwell argued that, rather than thinking of any incident as ‘a common case of green-sickness’, one should concentrate on the organ most seriously affected, as chlorosis would head for the weakest organ in the patient (1836: 539). The most difficult variety to cure was when the cerebellum was affected, even though the structures of the brain would remain unaltered (1836:542). Should chlorosis affect the lung, it would cause previously latent lung diseases to surface (1836:545). By the end of the nineteenth century, chlorosis had been reinvented yet again, this time as a blood disorder: hypochromic anaemia. In its earlier incarnation as the disease of virgins, blood was responsible for the symptoms because it was too thick and sticky to pass through a virgin’s narrow channels into the womb; its thickness could be due to a faulty diet. Because, in the Galenic body, the liver made blood, the idea that the blood was inadequate could be traced back to the liver. In the nineteenth-century version of chlorosis, however, the new science of blood testing involved looking into the blood itself, and measuring its constituent parts to explain the symptoms.
