influenced by Romanticism. One of the terms they used for TB was
spes moribunda,
Latin for “dying hope.” This referred to the flushed cheeks of the terminal consumptive, giving the false impression of good health.
Death was a prevalent theme in Romantic writing. The Graveyard School of poetry celebrated death, nights, ruins, churchyards, and ghosts. One of the most popular themes was a veiled widow in black mourning dress. The poet John Keats died at age twenty-five from TB. One of his most famous poems is “Ode to a Nightingale,” which describes the agony of a dying patient.
In painting, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood obsessed over morbidity, usually showing models who were wistful, lonely, dispirited, and tubercular. Flaming redheads were especially popular subjects. Indeed, Elizabeth Siddall and Jane Burden, two of the favorite pre-Raphaelite models, actually had TB.
Other Romantic tuberculars include the writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, and the three Brontë sisters; the philosopher Henry David Thoreau; the artist Aubrey Beardsley; and the composer Frédéric Chopin. Some lived for a long time, but all did their work in the knowledge that their lives might be cut short by consumption. Not all artistic types got TB, of course, however much they might wish for the disease. The poet Lord Byron was a fanatical dieter whose obsession with extra flesh bordered on anorexia. He thought consumption would make him more attractiveto women. “Look at that poor Byron,” he imagined them saying. “How interesting he looks in dying.”
Eventually this cult of youth and consumptive thinness began to resonate beyond Romantic circles, even reshaping ideals of the pudgy upper class. By the twentieth century, food was becoming plentiful and cheap in the industrial world, so a big waistline no longer had snob appeal. Instead, the long necks, bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and emaciated bodies of tubercular Romanticism became the elite standard, especially among upper-class women like American socialite, Nazi sympathizer, and wannabe queen of England Wallis Simpson. She announced that “one can never be too rich or too thin.” Today the tubercular look remains popular in the fashion industry’s unflagging obsession with malnourished models. Even young girls feel the pressure to emulate consumptive scrawniness. Early on they learn the premium society places on appearance—and may feel that to be popular and considered pretty, they need to be skinny. Ironically, in the supersized industrial world, it is not the rich but the fast-food-fed poor who are the fattest class of all.
Western ideas about Romantic tuberculosis have parallels in Asia. In the eighteenth-century Chinese novel
The Dream of the Red Chamber,
the heroine, Lin Tai-yu, dies of TB at the moment her sweetheart marries another woman. In Japan, writers and some doctors called TB “lovesickness.” It was thought to be an illness brought on by longing or frustration that made people more intelligent and passionate. Love-starved daughters and diligent boys studying the Chinese classics were considered most susceptible. Tokutomi Roka’s1898 novel
Hototogisu
(“Nightingale”) is about a young wife miraculously cured of her terminal tuberculosis when her beloved husband returns from abroad. This hugely popular book has been the subject of several films, many dramas, and a hit song. It is but one example of a Japanese literary genre that revolves around tuberculosis.
In Japan, tuberculosis was thought to be lovesickness.
The romance is gone
Tuberculosis lost its romantic status once the true cause of the disease was understood. After the publication of Pasteur’s
Germ Theory of Disease
in 1880, researchers raced to discover one infectious microbe after another. In March 1882, after eight months of effort, Robert Koch finally isolated the TB bacterium. Consumption, it turned out, wasn’t hereditary at all. The Koch bacillus was a rod-shaped microbe
spes moribunda,
Latin for “dying hope.” This referred to the flushed cheeks of the terminal consumptive, giving the false impression of good health.
Death was a prevalent theme in Romantic writing. The Graveyard School of poetry celebrated death, nights, ruins, churchyards, and ghosts. One of the most popular themes was a veiled widow in black mourning dress. The poet John Keats died at age twenty-five from TB. One of his most famous poems is “Ode to a Nightingale,” which describes the agony of a dying patient.
In painting, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood obsessed over morbidity, usually showing models who were wistful, lonely, dispirited, and tubercular. Flaming redheads were especially popular subjects. Indeed, Elizabeth Siddall and Jane Burden, two of the favorite pre-Raphaelite models, actually had TB.
Other Romantic tuberculars include the writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, and the three Brontë sisters; the philosopher Henry David Thoreau; the artist Aubrey Beardsley; and the composer Frédéric Chopin. Some lived for a long time, but all did their work in the knowledge that their lives might be cut short by consumption. Not all artistic types got TB, of course, however much they might wish for the disease. The poet Lord Byron was a fanatical dieter whose obsession with extra flesh bordered on anorexia. He thought consumption would make him more attractiveto women. “Look at that poor Byron,” he imagined them saying. “How interesting he looks in dying.”
Eventually this cult of youth and consumptive thinness began to resonate beyond Romantic circles, even reshaping ideals of the pudgy upper class. By the twentieth century, food was becoming plentiful and cheap in the industrial world, so a big waistline no longer had snob appeal. Instead, the long necks, bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and emaciated bodies of tubercular Romanticism became the elite standard, especially among upper-class women like American socialite, Nazi sympathizer, and wannabe queen of England Wallis Simpson. She announced that “one can never be too rich or too thin.” Today the tubercular look remains popular in the fashion industry’s unflagging obsession with malnourished models. Even young girls feel the pressure to emulate consumptive scrawniness. Early on they learn the premium society places on appearance—and may feel that to be popular and considered pretty, they need to be skinny. Ironically, in the supersized industrial world, it is not the rich but the fast-food-fed poor who are the fattest class of all.
Western ideas about Romantic tuberculosis have parallels in Asia. In the eighteenth-century Chinese novel
The Dream of the Red Chamber,
the heroine, Lin Tai-yu, dies of TB at the moment her sweetheart marries another woman. In Japan, writers and some doctors called TB “lovesickness.” It was thought to be an illness brought on by longing or frustration that made people more intelligent and passionate. Love-starved daughters and diligent boys studying the Chinese classics were considered most susceptible. Tokutomi Roka’s1898 novel
Hototogisu
(“Nightingale”) is about a young wife miraculously cured of her terminal tuberculosis when her beloved husband returns from abroad. This hugely popular book has been the subject of several films, many dramas, and a hit song. It is but one example of a Japanese literary genre that revolves around tuberculosis.
In Japan, tuberculosis was thought to be lovesickness.
The romance is gone
Tuberculosis lost its romantic status once the true cause of the disease was understood. After the publication of Pasteur’s
Germ Theory of Disease
in 1880, researchers raced to discover one infectious microbe after another. In March 1882, after eight months of effort, Robert Koch finally isolated the TB bacterium. Consumption, it turned out, wasn’t hereditary at all. The Koch bacillus was a rod-shaped microbe
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