The writer of
this book, John J. Ross, is a doctor who put his medical knowledge to work to
try and figure out what ailments plagued ten classic authors- and what killed
them.
Everyone talks
about their health, and authors are no different. Letters by and about them
give lots of clues as to their medical state, and they, along with articles and
biographies, have given Ross their symptoms. Modern medical training has given
him the means to decipher them. Shakespeare’s hand tremor was probably from
mercury poisoning, a treatment for venereal disease (and a lot of other things,
right up to the 1950s) in the Bard’s day. Nathaniel Hawthorne had social
phobia, and almost certainly died of a blood clot, which his advanced stomach
cancer put him at high risk for.
The book is a
bit like episodes of House (minus the massive bleeding scenes and the snark)
set in the past. The author explains, in plain language, how the various
diseases operate in the body and how he came to his conclusions. So it’s a bit
of a disease primer, as well as a history of medical treatments, some of which
are truly horrifying. I found it fascinating, both entertaining and
educational.
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