Cultures of the abdomen: diet, digestion, and fat in the modern world

Christopher E Forth and Ana CardenCoyne (eds), Cultures of the abdomen: diet, digestion, and fat in the modern world, Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. vi, 264, £40.00 (hardback 1-4039-6521-8).

Christopher E Forth and Ana Carden-Coyne rightly assert in their introduction to this edited edition that the abdomen is an area of the body left relatively unexplored by historians of medicine. We have little in the way of a full historiography of matters related to digestion, diet and gastric illness. Yet, as the editors argue, this gaping hole in the literature does not reflect the historical importance placed upon that particular region of the body and its component organs, as well as the significance of the complex relationship between the digestive system and far wider social, cultural and medical discourse. It is correctly stressed throughout that diet and nutrition in fact play critical roles in the development of our sense of self, and that...