Strange Appetites.

The article focuses on how 17th-century medical writers interpreted pregnant women's pica cravings as both a diagnostic sign and a source of cultural anxiety. Topics include physicians' attempts to explain pica through humoral theories and fears about female physiology, the moral and social suspicion directed at women's appetites—often exaggerated into sensational tales of cannibalism—and the broader early modern unease about pregnancy, reproduction, and women's power.