Over the course of the next few centuries, chlorosis would continue to afflict young women, and to confound physicians who found the condition at once mystifying and titillating, synonymous as it was with virginity, desirability, and sex. And while the idea of marital intercourse as a chlorosis panacea would eventually go out of style, the idea that chlorosis was a lifestyle disease that required the patient to surrender her autonomy to a male authority did not.
