#greensickness

adjective /ˈɡriːnsɪk/ /ˈɡrinˌsɪk/

in pathology: refers to chlorosis (an iron-deficiency anemia formerly common in adolescent girls that may impart a greenish tint to the skin)

earliest known evidence is from 1605, in a translation by Joshua Sylvester, poet and translator

notes from: Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern English Literature by Lesel Dawson

One of the aspects of women's lovesickness which has caused the most confusion is its relation to three other female maladies: hysteria, green sickness, and uterine fury. Although many critics assume that lovesickness is a version of one or several of these illnesses, lovesickness, hysteria, green sickness, and uterine fury are understood as separate maladies in the early modern period, with their own unique set of symptoms, stereotypical sufferers, and cultural associations. There is, however, an exception. When a woman's lovesickness develops into full-scale madness (as in the case of Ophelia), her illness is frequently seen to be related to her virginity and menstrual cycle and is thus represented as being similar to uterine disorders.

Green sickness, also known as the white fever, the disease of virgins, and from the 17th century onwards chlorosis, was thought to be an exclusively female malady, which was caused by suppressed menses and seed (also called sperm, or sperma).

Women afflicted with green sickness are held to exhibit a variety of symptoms: they are pale or badly coloured, have puffy faces and bodies, and suffer from headaches, nausea, impaired respiration, heart palpitations, and a racing pulse. They also have strange appetites, either craving odd and unusual food (a symptom known as pica) or having no appetite whatsoever. The absence of menstruation, however, remained the illness’s defining symptom. Women who were labelled as ‘green sick’ but who subsequently menstruated were rediagnosed as having an ‘obstruction of the spleen’.

Although a variety of remedies could be suggested (including phlebotomy, physical activity, a change of diet and various medicines), sexual intercourse was thought to be the most effective cure as it would open up the veins of the womb, releasing the trapped menses and seed. Young women who were believed to be green sick were thus advised to get married as soon as possible. As Helen King writes in her study of green sickness, ‘the cure for the disease of virgins was to cease to be a virgin’.

Contemporary theorists have sometimes tried to discover the ‘real’ malady behind green sickness. Clearly it has some affinity to what we now call premenstrual tension, and in later periods it is increasingly associated with anaemia and eating disorders. However, given the fact that the chief symptom of green sickness is the absence of menstruation, the condition that it most clearly resembles is pregnancy. In fact, it seems likely that, in certain circumstances, women disguised unwanted pregnancies as green sickness, an illness which simultaneously provided a justification for a speedy marriage. Once married, the hidden pregnancy could then be ‘discovered’, retrospectively confirming the doctor’s original diagnosis of green sickness; within this context, pregnancy would appear as the cure of the woman’s puffiness, nausea, exhaustion, and disorderly appetites, rather than their cause. Alternatively, women who were pregnant, but who claimed to be green sick, could ask doctors for the means with which to provoke menstruation, seeking remedies which would in effect cause an abortion.

Of the three uterine disorders, green sickness is the malady most relevant to lovesickness. Like lovesickness, green sickness is associated with a young woman’s emerging sexual appetites, emphasizing a woman’s readiness for marriage and providing a rationale for her contrary, unsettled emotions. The discourse surrounding green sickness also provides an alternative, negative way in which to imagine a woman’s virginity, countering Petrarchan and Neoplatonic traditions which grant virginity an elevated ethical and spiritual meaning. As such, green sickness reinforces the MISOGYNISTIC VIEW that women are fundamentally incomplete without men, suggesting that a woman’s virginity, rather than being the sign and source of her rational self-mastery, is an unnatural state prone to illness.

Green sickness furnished writers with a negative way in which to view virginity, allowing predominately male writers to denigrate overly chaste maidens as sickly or ‘stale’.

In Fletcher and Massinger’s The Elder Brother (1637), Lewis’s derogatory reference to green sickness as a debilitating illness associated with inexperienced young women is the standard way in which the illness is viewed in the early modern period. There are, however, some exceptions. Edward Herbert of Cherbury and Thomas Carew write poems that prettify the malady, depicting it as an erotic innocence that guarantees the woman’s sexual purity. Their poems portray green sickness as a state of sexual ripeness, which enhances the woman’s ethical status as well as her physical allure.

If green sickness reveals the peak of a woman’s sexual development, it also warns how quickly this ripeness will transform into rottenness if the sick virgin will not submit herself to her lover’s cure.

“If you have not died in the womb, or fallen prey to infant mortality, or to a young girl's greensickness, or to the dangers of childbirth, or if persistent pregnancies and perennial breeding have not worn you to a shadow, and you have not dwindled into a premature grave, then if war, sickness, accident or disease all keep their distance, your chances may be strong for a long life.” ― Elspeth Marr, Aunt Epp's Guide for Life: Miscellaneous Musings of a Victorian Lady

Elspeth Marr (1871-1947)—also known as Aunt Epp—was the great-great-Aunt of author Christopher Rush, who only knew her for two brief years before her death. She lived in the Kingom of Fife, Scotland, where she wrote copious letters and diaries to an unnamed "young girl" in her life. Those documents, which remained undiscovered for years, form the basis of Aunt Epp's Guide for Life.

Four and twenty ladies fair Were playing at the chess, And out then came the fair Janet, As green as onie glass.

- From Child’s 39A version of Tam Lin

When Janet returns home after her encounter with Tam Lin, she’s described as looking either pale or green. This is often followed by Janet being accused of being pregnant, so one interpretation of the ‘green’ is morning sickness. 

There is, however, another common trope about young women going about looking green, that of ‘greensickness’, a disease thought to inflict young women of childbearing years. Greensickness was often thought to be caused by (variously) a buildup of bodily humors due to the onset of menstruation, a type of lovesickness, too much studying, laziness, or, most frequently, a side effect of virginity/lack of pregnancy.

While the last of those is unlikely to be coupled with an accusation of pregnancy, greensickness was sometimes also associated with early pregnancy, or just with being lovelorn. If you’ve heard of someone being green with love in old stories and plays, that’s greensickness.

(spoiler: Greensickness was not a real ailment- while young women of childbearing age have often suffered from anemia, which is what a lot of the greensickness symptoms are describing, the ailment itself was mostly a way to say that women ought to stay home and have children.) 

Anyway, here’s a Sawbones episode on greensickness, going over the history and treatment of this ‘illness’ of women. The Podcast is run by a doctor and her husband, and it’s a hilarious and informative tour on the sometimes mystifying, often horrifying, and usually strange history of medical ailments and their treatments. It’s one of my favorite podcasts, and I thought this episode was particularly interesting, so I’m glad there’s a way I can tie it to Tam Lin and share it with you. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, check out their other epsiodes. It’s a great podcast.

Perec: This lofty individual would accost a visibly dying man and, airily tapping him on the arm, solicit from him a lugubrious smirk; would comfort anybody incurably ill with an amusing or consoling word; would charm a sick child with a lollipop and his fond mama with a toothy grin; and, confronting a handful of almost moribund invalids, would propound an instant diagnosis: malaria, Parkinson's, bronchitis, a malignant tumor, a postnatal coma, syphilis, convulsions, palpitations and a torticollis.