The specialized literature has shown us the great similarity between the eating habits of medieval fasting women saints and today's anorexic women. Nonetheless, there are few references to the existence of such fasting women saints in Latin America. The authors of this paper present some aspects of the life of Saint Rose of Lima, the patroness of the Americas and the Philippines, that could be described as anorexic. The comparison between psychopathological aspects of Saint Rose's life and the behavior of today's anorexic women seemed to confirm a uniform behavioral pattern, particularly concerning the imitative aspect, which would lead modern young girls to develop eating disorders after they obtain some information on such disorders.
Anorexia nervosa; holly anorexia; chlorosis; starvation