March 11, 2009 marks the 105th anniversary of the birth of Hilde Bruch, one of the 20th century's groundbreaking experts on childhood obesity and anorexia. Dr. Bruch was born in a small town in Germany. As a young woman she wanted to become a mathematician, but an uncle convinced her that medicine was a more practical profession for a Jewish woman. In 1929, she earned her medical degree from the University of Freiburg. In 1933, she fled from Germany due to growing anti-Semitic sentiment and spent a year in England before immigrating to the United States.

In New York, she began working at Babies Hospital; here, she started groundbreaking research into obesity in children in 1937. In 1941, she left this area of research to study psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Upon returning to New York in 1943, Dr. Bruch started a private psychoanalytic practice and joined the faculty of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

At Columbia, and later at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas (she joined the faculty in 1964), Dr. Bruch focused her research on the underlying causes of anorexia nervosa. Throughout her career, Dr. Bruch published academic and lay articles on eating disorders and saw patients in her private practice until she was 80. Dr. Bruch died in Houston in December of 1984. Her collected work was published in 1973 under the title Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Person Within; it is still considered a definitive work. (Source: http://thisdayinjewishhistory.blogspot.com)

Labels: anorexia, childhood-obesity, research

Posted By: Aspen Education Group