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Summary
Summary
The doctor suddenly appeared beside Will, startling him. He was sleek and prosperous, with a dainty goatee. Though he smiled reassuringly, the poet noticed that he kept a safe distance. In a soothing, urbane voice, the physician explained the treatment: stewed prunes to evacuate the bowels; succulent meats to ease digestion; cinnabar and the sweating tub to cleanse the disease from the skin. The doctor warned of minor side effects: uncontrolled drooling, fetid breath, bloody gums, shakes and palsies. Yet desperate diseases called for desperate remedies, of course.
Were Shakespeare 's shaky handwriting, his obsession with venereal disease, and his premature retirement connected? Did John Milton go blind from his propaganda work for the Puritan dictator Oliver Cromwell, as he believed, or did he have a rare and devastating complication of a very common eye problem? Did Jonathan Swift 's preoccupation with sex and filth result from a neurological condition that might also explain his late-life surge in creativity? What Victorian plague wiped out the entire Brontë family? What was the cause of Nathaniel Hawthorne 's sudden demise? Were Herman Melville 's disabling attacks of eye and back pain the product of "nervous affections," as his family and physicians believed, or did he actually have a malady that was unknown to medical science until well after his death? Was Jack London a suicide, or was his death the product of a series of self-induced medical misadventures? Why did W. B. Yeats 's doctors dose him with toxic amounts of arsenic? Did James Joyce need several horrific eye operations because of a strange autoimmune disease acquired from a Dublin streetwalker? Did writing Nineteen Eighty-Four actually kill George Orwell ? The Bard meets House, M.D. in this fascinating untold story of the impact of disease on the lives and works of some the finest writers in the English language. In Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough , John Ross cheerfully debunks old biographical myths and suggests fresh diagnoses for these writers' real-life medical mysteries. The author takes us way back, when leeches were used for bleeding and cupping was a common method of cure, to a time before vaccinations, sterilized scalpels, or real drug regimens. With a healthy dose of gross descriptions and a deep love for the literary output of these ten greats, Ross is the doctor these writers should have had in their time of need.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
A doctor looks at symptoms afflicting writers from the Elizabethan era to the mid-20th century. Ross, an infectious disease specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard, is well qualified to take on this topic. He approaches his subjects chronologically, giving the book an added element of medical history, which is sometimes as interesting as the attempts to diagnose the subjects from the occasionally sketchy evidence. Shakespeare may well have suffered from syphilis, but references to it in his works aren't necessarily proof that he did. Ross knows this, of course, and he makes a good effort to bring in other evidence. Other than specialists in literary history, most readers will find out more about these writers than they have ever known. That is especially true for the medical material. Who knew there were (reasonably) effective treatments for venereal disease during the Renaissance? The discussions of Swift's dementia and Milton's blindness offer windows into the social milieus in which the writers moved, as well as their rather difficult personalities. Melville and Hawthorne were friends, and Oliver Wendell Holmes treated both in his role as a physician. The role of Ezra Pound in advancing the careers of Yeats and Joyce, and several other top-rank writers, may almost excuse his support for fascism in World War II. Ross offers plenty of other surprising connections between topics. The book's weakest points are the author's occasional attempts to fictionalize some of his subjects' experiences. Especially recommended for readers who enjoy historical context with their great books.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
