Corpulency. Medical concepts, images and metaphors from 1500 to 1900

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This project aims at an analysis of the long-term developments in the concepts, images and metaphors which medical writers and ordinary people used to describe and understand corpulency. It will start from the hypothesis that the more strictly medical ideas about the nature, genesis and dangers of corpulency as well as the terms, images and metaphors used to describe it, were subject to profound changes in the period under consideration. Presumably, this process was prompted by new theories of the body and its diseases as well as by changes in aesthetic (e.g. the new ideal of the slim body), moral (e.g. gluttony as a deadly sin) and social (e.g. corpulency as a sign of affluence) norms and ideals, which were supported, in turn, by an increasing trend among physician to treat corpulency as a pathological state. The analysis will focus on the German speaking territories. It will focus on learned, scientific texts and the growing bulk of popularizing medical writings (health advice books, encyclopedias, advertisements for spas etc.) dealing with corpulency/obesity and its hazards. This analysis will by complemented by a look at changing visual representations of corpulent persons and, based on a sample of digitalized texts, by an analysis of the images and metaphors which surrounded the corpulent body in non-medical contexts.