The Tapeworm and Maria Callas’ Diet: A Mystery Revealed

Abstract

Maria Callas’ diet, also known as the tapeworm diet, is a non-food-based hazardous treatment. This study aims to justify whether Maria Callas used this treatment for weight loss. To investigate this, we searched in the ‘white’, ‘grey’, and ‘black’ literature. The historical facts about the use of tapeworm pills seem to be inconsistent and include fake news. In the case of Maria Callas, it has been confirmed by her biography and personal communications that she was diagnosed with a beef tapeworm due to eating uncooked meat. This discredits the hypothesis that she consumed tapeworm pills.

“Guess Who?” in the Creation of Hazardous and Non-Hazardous Diets through History

“…This category grouped 20 out of 179 studied diets. Among treatments of this category, the use of vomiting [155][156][157], exercise [158], repeated brisk 42 km walks from Athens to Megara at progressively increasing speeds in some patients [159], urine [160], sea-bathing [161], exercise, baths, venesection and purging [162], phlebotomy [163], saline [164], chewing many times [165], tapeworm [166], changing the mind [167], hormone human chorionic gonadotropin [168], sleeping more hours than normal and to achieve this, sedatives [169], two brackets which are attached to the upper and lower teeth (without the need for anesthesia or surgery) and connected to each other through a thin wire in order to maintain the jaw in its proper position [170], nasogastric tube [171], placing a mesh of more or less rigid surgical material on the surface of the patient's tongue by means of staples or stitches, making it impossible to eat solid food [172], cotton ball [173] or an operation as follows: 'doctors prepared very long, thin needles and pushed them through the hips and belly of Dionysius when he had fallen into a deep sleep. They inserted the needles from top to bottom into the insensitive (and, so to say, alien) flesh of the tyrant.…”