Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough: The Medical Lives of Famous Writers

by John J. Ross

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 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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Medicine, Medical, Science, Biography, Books About Books

291 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2012

Reviews

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

W. Shakespare, J. Milton, J. Swift, Bronte Kardeşler (Charlotte, Emily, Anne), N. Hawthorne, H. Melville, W. B. Yeats, J. London, J. Joyce, ve G. Orwell.
Bu büyük yazarların yaşadıkları sağlık sorunları, hastalıkları ve ölüm nedenleri çok ayrıntılı olarak anlatılıyor. Ancak ayrıntıya o kadar çok giriliyor ki kitabı okuma zevki, ritmi azalıyor.

Yazar hekim olunca kendini çok frenleyememiş. Hastalıkların patolojisi ve tıp tarihine de girmiş. Herşeye rağmen bu büyük yazarların da herkes gibi olduklarını, hastalıkların onlar için de “insanlık hallerinden” olduğunu hatırlatan iyi bir çalışma.

[Seher Andaç · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elleri kalem tutması bir yana dünyaca meşhur 10 yazara, John Ross bir de doktor gözüyle bakmış. Kendisi bir hekim ve hem dahiliye hem de enfeksiyon hastalıkları uzmanı.
Shakespeare, Milton, Jonathan Swift, Bronte kardeşler, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, William Butler Yeats, Jack London, James Joyce, George Orwell üzerine odaklanmış. Aile öyküleri ile birlikte yazarların hayat hikayelerini, ürettikleri edebi eserlerle bağlayarak oldukça akıcı bir şekilde anlatmış. Ara ara kahkaha attığım yorumları olmadı değil:)
Okurken tıbbi ve geleneksel tedavinin tarihini de merakla okumuş oldum. Civa, kurşun ve arsenik gibi elementler tıbbi tedavi amaçlı kullanılıyor. İlk anda şaşırtıcı gelse de bugünün ağır metal zehirlenmeleri o günlerden farklı değil. Yazar, Şekspir’in ellerindeki titremenin bir nedeninin civa zehirlenmesi olabileceğini varsayıyor. Yani Vedat Milor’un ellerindeki titremenin nedeniyle aynı. V. Milor kendisi açıkladı. Yediği midye gibi deniz ürünleri buna sebep. Gıda mühendisi Bülent Şık’ta çikolatadaki kurşuna dikkat çeker. Denizin, okyanusun Afrika’ya taşıdığı onca çöp bunun bir sebebi. Uzun bir konu ve bugünün çok ciddi bir halk sorunu.
Kitapta bahsedilen hastalıkların büyük bir çoğunluğu zührevi hastalıklardan oluşuyor. O zamanlarda bir tabu ve hâlâ da öyle.
İlk gençlik yıllarım Yeni Hayat ansiklopedisini keşfetmekle geçmişti. Bronte kardeşlerin yaşamları beni çok etkilemişti. Yine aynı duygularla okudum…
Dikkatimi çeken başka bir nokta da on yazarın zorlu hayat koşullarına ve sağlıklarındaki büyük sorunlara rağmen ellerinden kalemi hiç bırakmamaları oldu. Etkilendim.
Ben olsam hangi yazarları eklerdim diye düşündüm. İlk aklıma Emily Dickinson ve Peyami Safa geldi. Sizce başka kimler olabilir?

[Zeynep T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

İç hastalıkları ve bulaşıcı hastalıklar uzmanı Dr. John J. Ross yazarlar ve hastalıkları hakkında tıbbi bakış açısıyla yazılmış bir metin kaleme almak amacıyla çıkmış yola. Ele aldığı yazarlar sırasıyla; William Shakespeare, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Brontéler, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, William Butler Yeats, Jack London, James Joyce ve George Orwell.

Ben yoğun olarak yazarların hastalıklarının eserlerine nasıl yansıdığı üzerinde durulur diye düşünürken anlatılanlardan tıp tarihine dair kısımların daha çok ilgimi çektiğini farkettim. Yazarların kitaplarına atıf var ama doktor bey bol bol teşhis koyup o dönemlerde uygulanan ya da günümüzde yapılan tedavilerden bahsetmiş.

Öncelikle Avrupalıların pisliğine ne demeli bilmiyorum, bazı yerlerde okurken midem bulandı. İnsanların iyileşmek için yediği içtiği şeyler keza yine midemi kaldırdı. Tarih okuru kardeşim ülkemizin durumunun da 19. ve 20. yüzyıllarda farklı olmadığını söyledi. Kitap, medeniyet hakkında epey düşündürttü. Tüberküloz tedavisinin mesela bu kadar geç bulunması, penisilin, kortizon, antibiyotiklerin keşfi vs. dünya üzerinde insanlığın var olduğu yıllar düşünülürse epey geç gelmiş gibi hissettiriyor bana.

Ele alınan yazarların ortak başka bir özelliği de çocukluktan itibaren okumaya aşırı düşkün olmaları. Çoğunun miyop olmasının sebebi imiş ayrıca. Bu sürpriz olmadı tabii.

Okuması zevkli ve bilgilendirici bir edebiyat tarihi çalışması. Beklediğimden farklı çıktı ama güzeldi. Hastalıklar ele alınan yazarların hayatını ve eserlerini nasıl şekillendirmiş merak ediyorsanız bakın derim kitaba.

Not: 46. sayfada Milton'un, kız kardeşi Anne'in ölümünün ardından oğulları Edward ve John'u evlat edindiği bilgisi var. 47. sayfanın sonunda yeğenleri büyüdüklerinde "amcalarına" olan düşkünlüklerini sürdürdüler yazılmış. Annenin kardeşi dayı olmalıydı. Çeviri genel olarak iyi ama tekleyen yerler var.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a terrific read. Dr Ross correlated the clinicopathologic details with the lives of the famous authors, and offered up his interpretation of the most likely diagnoses. He provides logical evidence for his conclusions, in a way reminiscent of the Clinicopathologic Conferences of the New England Journal of Medicine. But these are way more interesting to read.

I liked how he integrated the medical details with the biographical details.

For instance, through logical deduction he shows that Jonathan Swift likely suffered from frontotemporal dementia which is characterized by marked disinhibition. His creative output, especially of scatalogical poems, surged late in life, around the time when his dementia was likely beginning.

The chapter I most enjoyed was on James Joyce, he with those round dark glasses. Joyces’s symptoms began around 1904, when he complained of burning urinary symptoms; his friend thought it sounded like ‘gleet’, or gonorrhea. That was not surprising, given Joyce’s “penchant for wenching in Dublin’s red-light district.” The penile purulent discharge was at the time believed to be gonorrhea, but very likely also represented Chlamydia infection. Infection with both diseases was also possible - that was (and is) a frequent occurrence.

Three years later he developed polyarthritis and iritis (inflammation of the iris of the eye). Joyce continued to be plagued by severe progressive eye damage due to recurrent bouts of inflammation.
.
This triad, of inflammation of the urethra, eyes and joints, is typical of Reiter’s syndrome, which is an autoimmune disease triggered by infection, typically Chlamydia. It was named after the German physician Hans Conrad Julius Reiter, who years later was convicted of war crimes, which included medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners.

Over the years, Joyce was afflicted by recurrent relapses of arthritis and eye inflammations, and suffered much damage to his eyes from the scarring and attempted futile repairs, eventually rendering him almost blind.


When World War 2 broke out, Joyce’s schizophrenic daughter (Lucia, named after the patron saint of vision) was in an asylum in occupied France. Joyce feared for her. The Nazi policy was of forced sterilization or euthanasia of the mentally ill. And who was in charge of that program? Yes, Dr Hans Reiter, of Reiter’s syndrome, the disease suffered by James Joyce.

If he had only used a condom…

[Pinar Celebi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ünlü yazarların tıbbi geçmişlerini yer yer anılarından yer yer eserlerinden alıntılar yaparak anlatan, oldukça bilgilendirici, okuması keyifli bir kitap.

[Moira · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I was v dubious about this, but there are so many of my favourite literary figures -- Joyce, Yeats, Charlotte Bronte, Orwell, Swift -- I couldn't resist. What saves this book is the prose style; it's not really visible in the original article that sparked off the book, about Shakespeare, here: http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content... but his writing is witty and vivid. He does overdiagnose everyone with Asperger's, but also makes good sense about creativity and manic depression, and he didn't do a lot of sneering at the past, which always wins historians points in my book. The New York Times critic didn't like the fictionalized scenes in some of the chapters (Joyce visits a clap doctor -- did I say vivid?) but I thought they were pretty well-done. This book is entertaining and informative, but most of all sympathetic, to both the physical and psychological tortures often due as much to "cures" as the ailments they supposedly treated. The chapter on Orwell is particularly touching.

[Tarmia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavy in parts, John Ross has a surprisingly gripping narrative voice.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for off-the-wall non-fiction, particularly when it is related to infectious diseases, medicine, chaos theory, and interesting historical figures. This is in the first two and last of those buckets. The book is easy to "digest" in vignettes that are presented in the form of chapters about famous authors and their suspected or known diseases of which they suffered that likely had strong influences on their writing and overall temperament and approach to life. The writers discussed are nearly all in my list of favorites from literary history (I wish he had included Aldous Huxley and John Steinbeck) and I was familiar with all of their discussed maladies save for Shakespeare’s and Jack London’s.

When I finish a book like this and I come away with new knowledge, especially in the areas of science and medicine then I feel that my time was justified, and if that time was much enjoyed and enhanced with a broadening of historical context and/or fleshing out of the “biography” of a person or place then even better. This book delivered all of that for me.

It wasn’t a deep read for me, but it was a fun read and anyone who is interested in medicine or literature I think will find this a very fun book to read. The author does a good job of analyzing the writings of each of the authors presented and he also explains the overall disease processes involved in each vignette as well as discusses the state-of-medicine at that point in history compared to how present-day medicine approaches these diseases now. It is quite eye opening. The fact that the author is himself a medical doctor adds a lot of weight to presentation. Don’t pass up on the footnotes and side comments because that’s where some of the better parts of the book live.

[McODAL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yazarların sağlık problemleri ve ölüm nedenleri ile ilgili ilginç bilgiler. Hiç mi biri sağlam olmaz?...

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through details of famous writers' medical maladies, John Ross explores their lives and literary works. What killed George Orwell: the stress of writing 1984, the damp and dreary weather on the Scottish island of Jura, or bad treatments for a childhood illness? If Milton had not gone blind, would he have written Paradise Lost? Did Jack London's self-medication lead to his physical weakening and eventual death? Also under investigation are Shakespeare's syphilis, Jonathan Swift's dementia, the Brontë sisters' tuberculosis, Nathaniel Hawthorne's stomach cancer, and the many maladies of Herman Melville. As well as plenty of interesting detail about writers' lives, there are tidbits about medicine through the ages, such as the Ancient Roman method of treating venereal disease.
The author is the Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, so he certainly knows his science; what's wonderful about this book is that he knows his novels too. The prose reads well, and each chapter has the drama and narrative arc of fiction. The details of the writers' lives are fascinating, and it's enjoyable to trace how their physical ailments may have affected their work. Orwell's Cough manages the perfect balance: enough medicalese to interest the biologically-minded, and enough details about writers' lives for the literary-minded. As soon as I finished the book, I turned right back to the start and read it again.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting engrossing read that sheds light on the deaths on some of the world's best writers. I personally read it to get more of an idea of how Jack London's death took place, his death has especially been an enigma to me. He was found dead one morning with two bottles of empty morphine next to him. The very question that remains unanswered today is if London purposeful committed suicide or accidentally overdosed.

He suffered from "uremia followed by renal colic", the onset of pain drove London to inject himself with a fatal amount of morphine. As the book say it would be "ironic for a writer who writes about the struggles of survival". Personally as a Jack London fan I find it hard to believe that he purposefully committed suicide. It is true that he tried to commit suicide in his late teens but that was before he got into writing bestsellers. Suicides are also prevalent in some of his books such as Martin Eden, but there is just something about London that makes me refuse to accept the idea of him doing such a thing even on his death bed.

To quote his credo "I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot", it is through this passage that makes me firmly hold onto the idea that Jack London would not want to fizzle into nothingness without fighting through his straining mortality first.

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think this subject would be as interesting as it turned out to be. Dr. Ross tries to piece together what illnesses may have afflicted different writers. I was thoroughly saddened by the difficulties they all went through. The Bronte family especially, and of those, Emily's story was the most tragic. ( What surprised me the most was that reading about James Joyce actually made me want to look Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses up - something I have never wanted to do before.) I knew nothing about George Orwell's life before this, and was amazed at how much he suffered. The descriptions of what that man (and everyone else with his medical condition at the time) endured was horrific. It sure makes you think twice before wishing you had any of their talent - if its to come at such extreme cost, as it did for them.

[Agnesv · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started out well, but then degenerated to an author's rant and lecture. I felt like I was in med school. The author obviously likes Oliver Wendall Holmes, as that physician can do no wrong. Nearly every author is either bi-polar or has Asperger's Syndrome. Can no-one be mentally stable and be a literary genius? After the beginning, too much political and literary preening, and not enough substance.

[Canan Demiralay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kesinlikle ilginç bir kitap, okuduğum birçok eserde yapılan göndermeleri nasıl da gözden kaçırdığımı şaşırarak farkettim.Okumadıklarımı bu kitaptan öğrendiklerim ışığında okumak için de büyük bir heves duymaya başladım. Tek eleştirim kitapta yazım-imla hataları ve düşük cümlelerin bol miktarda yer alması!

[Adriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The dominant literary theory in the 20th century was the New Criticism, which taught that text was all, that the life and times of the author had little importance to the appreciation of art. Yet many readers ignore this too precious idea and assume that the writer is inspired by circumstances. Biography can lead to a greater appreciation of the work. In Dr. John Ross’ medical biography of a handful of great English authors, he accounts for some of the well known as well as the highly speculative details of their writing lives, occasionally reflecting on their works. Some of the details are TMI, far Too Much Information, especially in the descriptions of the treatments and poisonous potions given to these unfortunate sufferers. Here are the literary victims and their maladies:

Shakespeare shook. His handwriting became increasingly tremulous and some have surmised that he had syphilis or perhaps just a dose of the clap. But his tremor is the only known fact of his diminished scrawl and who knows, this could have been age itself. That his work frequently referenced venereal diseases is not evidence and neither is the difficult question of why he completely stopped writing at all. We do learn from Ross that syphilis probably came to Europe from the Caribbean, brought back by Columbus’ crew and the other early explorers. Perhaps this was only justice as the South Americans were gifted with smallpox and other Continental diseases.

John Milton was a pedantic and generally reprehensible SOB, but we knew that. He may have had Asperger syndrome. His blindness was probably caused by chronic glaucoma and retinal detachment related to severe myopia. Ross confirms what your mother told you, that reading in low light ruins the eyes, or at least a lot of reading does. Myopia is not common to pre-literate societies. Lead poisoning may have also given Milton intestinal problems (he was “afflicted with flatulence”) and the deterioration of his kidneys. The lead may have come from drinking vessels or from his physicians. None of his physicians were able to make him a better person.

Jonathan Swift became dizzy and deaf, probably from Meniere’s disease. He grew depressed, dull and demented. No doubt he had OCD, he was obsessively clean, hated filth and was disgusted by sex. This did not temper his love life with a Stella Johnson and Hester Vanessa Vanhomrigh, insisting on their fastidious cleanliness. Some of the smutty passages in his writing may have been a result of his increasing dementia. After his death, his fortune went to a hospital for the mentally ill which “now has wards named after Stella and Vanessa.”

The Bronte sisters and the whole sickly family suffered greatly from one awful thing or another. The girls father, Patrick Brunty (he adopted the less ruffian name Bronte) was a literary but pious tyrant and a vicar who enforced his moral rules with a strong left hook. He placed the famous Charlotte and Emily, together with the lesser known Maria and Elizabeth in a cruel Dickensian boarding school that was subsequently shut down for its vile and unhygienic conditions. It did not close in time to save several of the girls from death by tuberculosis. Both Maria and Elizabeth Bronte expired promptly and Charlotte and Emily went on to fame and the unfortunate life of chronic consumptives. A brother, Branwell, took to the wilder side of life and drugs, from which he too died young. Then there was Aspergers, depression, insomnia, hyperemesis, delirium, malnutrition, and possibly bipolar disorder. The youngest of the sisters, Anne, an early feminist writer, “died peacefully” of tuberculosis. Ross notes that Asperger syndrome may be conducive to the quiet, asocial life of a writer. And in an aside, Dr. Ross discusses how cystic fibrosis, when only one of the recessive genes is present, may actually provide protection from tuberculosis.

Nathaniel Hawthorne had a social phobia that was extreme and no doubt pathological. Attendant to this was depression and alcoholism. His intense shyness led him to slight a visiting publisher, but then run after him as he left and he “shyly handed him a bundle of papers.” This was the manuscript of The Scarlet Letter, one of the perennial contenders for Great American Novel. Long a depressive but physically healthy for most of his life, Hawthorne began to decline in health and weight and energy and finally succumb, probably due to stomach cancer.

Herman Melville’s father suffered bipolar disorder leading to an acute breakdown called Bell’s mania and ultimately death. Melville was no stranger to mental disorders and even Melvilles’s sons suffered likewise. Melville writes of the debauchery and drunkenness among the sailors in the South Seas and may well have indulged in some of the same. Wild and uninhibited sex is a not too subtle theme in his writing although there is no real evidence he engage in anything like physical love for Nathaniel Hawthorne his friend and neighbor to whom he clearly was enormously attracted. There is what must only be called a love letter to Hawthorne that has led to speculation about Melville’s most personal life, but there is no smoking gun. His bipolar affliction resulted in maniacal bouts of writing for which the reading public can only be grateful. Melville also suffered debilitating back pain attributed to rheumatism but which Dr. Ross contends must have been ankylosing spondylitis. AS also could account for Melville’s eye affliction, chest pain and even loss in height. All this assortment of ailments may well account for the gloomy writing. He live long with his many illnesses but the one that killed him was heart failure. After his death, Billy Budd was published, but of course, it was Moby Dick that places this long-suffering author in the first rank of novelists in the English language.

William Butler Yeats suffered much from his lungs and had the kind of heart trouble that leads to the agonies of the lovelorn the most compelling of poetry. It was his heart the finally did him in, dying of heart failure, “his wife and two mistresses in attendance.” Like Dante and Beatrice, Yeats forever loved his Maude Gonne, who repeatedly spurned his marriage proposals, as did Maude Gonne’s daughter. Yeats did marry the loyal Georgina Hyde Lees, a friend of Ezra Pound. The young American Ezra Pound was a genius poet who worshipped the elder poet. Yeats frequently lived with Pound in Italy, until madness and cynicism turned Ezra Pound into a fascist and traitor. Brucellosis was the worst of the ailments for Yeats, if love-sickness does not count. Caused by a bacterium transmitted through contaminated milk, brucellosis is a devastating lung disease that was difficult to treat before the age of antibiotics. Yeats was treated with arsenic, a valuable remedy for infections known from ancient Greek times and is still used in veterinary medicine. Yeats may have had a bit too much of the stuff and had a slow recovery. He also voluntarily endured a “Steinach procedure”. Steinach, a wacko charlatan, gave patients what was only a vasectomy, which he apparently convinced his dupes would restore the youthful vigor of their manly parts. Surely Yeats had enough troubles without this, but the poor Irish patriot wrote some of the most moving and transcendent poetry in the English language.

On the other hand, there are those who consider Jack London a hack who wrote a couple of worthy stories. Nonetheless, London became enormously popular and quite rich. Jack London was bipolar and his maniacal bouts of energy produced volumes of rip-roaring adventure stories. On one of his own adventures in the Solomon Islands, London contracted yaws, a disease that is a first-cousin to syphilis but can be contracted by only casual contact. He suffered from terrible skin ulcers, a rectal fistula, and from the regimen of the attempted cure: arsenic and mercury. As a wealthy celebrity writer, physicians would prescribe for him most anything. For later ailments, in addition to the toxic mercury, but possibly effective arsenic, London was given heroin, strychnine, belladonna, and a plethora of other snake oils. He died of an overdose.

James Joyce had a dose of the gleet. The clap. Gonorrhea. Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The description of the symptoms, and worse, the treatment, is given by Dr. Ross, but not to be repeated here. Joyce apparently took the cure for this awful malady and survived unscathed. He may also have contracted chlamidia resulting in reactive arthritis. Reactive arthritis, triggered by the genital infections is an autoimmune disease. This in turn may have triggered his iritis, an inflammation of the iris. This became chronic and led to his near blindness. What was the treatment? Do you want to know? Yes, he was treated with leeches applied to the eye. During the writing of one of the greatest of literary feats, the magnificent Ulysses, his afflicted eyes worsened with severe glaucoma. Ross reports that frequently in Ulysses, many passages refer to the aforementioned gleet and other STD manifestations. Joyce’s eyes continued to worsen, and he had to suffer the repeated cruelties of ocular surgeries. What did the great wordsmith in at last was acute peritonitis. Ross relates a doubtful anecdote, but one that rings so true about Joyce and his lifelong argument with Irish Catholicism. A priest offered to give Joyce a church requiem and burial, but the writer’s wife Nora said, no, “I couldn’t do that to him.”

George Orwell had a bad cough. Trouble with breathing, congestion, and bronchitis began to bedevil Orwell, born Eric Blair in 1903, as early as infancy. He had a brilliant academic career but being decidedly among the common classes in snooty England, he took on the role of a policeman in Burma. His weak lungs suffered in the East and he only worsened his condition upon an early retirement by a Bohemian lifestyle as scruffy writer in London. Here he was given to fits of coughing up blood, attacks of pneumonia, and later tuberculosis. The cruelties of his venture in fighting the fascists in the Spanish civil war did not help. He took a bullet to the neck in that war and miraculously survived. His incessant smoking could not have helped either. When the world war came to England in 1940, the adventurous socialist volunteered his services, but of course, he failed his physicals. Ross provides copious details of Orwell’s failing health, including various gruesome descriptions, which probably ought to be skipped by the squeamish. No doubt Orwell’s suffering was not only from his diseases, but from the awful medical procedures which may have inspired some of the torture and institutional cruelties in Nineteen Eighty-four. The critical and financial success of that novel came too late in life for Orwell as he was already dying. He enjoyed a brief reprieve from his impending end, and sought to take a rest in the Swiss Alps but before his flight was to leave he died alone in the hospital, a gloomy genius to the last.

[Evalina Street · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very enjoyable read. Ross takes you through a brief history of the authors and the events surrounding them that may have contributed to their health and reason for genius and death. I found his use of vocabulary engaging and enlightening.

[Melissa S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mostly enjoyed this collection of mini-biographies of famous writers, with a focus on their various maladies examined at through a medical lens. It's entertaining and I learned some interesting trivia, and came away feeling very lucky to live in a time when medicine involves more than a let's-try-some-mercury-or-maybe-arsenic approach. The transitions from breezy bio to medical analysis were a bit abrupt, and the author's tone in the latter sections often comes across as detached and judgmental (and everyone and their dog seems to get diagnosed with Asperger's on top of whatever else ails them). There's also a really insidious assumption that great artists have to suffer to make great art, which is not cool.

Also, from a formatting perspective, the book badly needed more and larger images to bring things to life, and wider margins to help the reader feel less like they're being overwhelmed with walls of text.

[Tirzah Eleora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite interesting. The author gives known biographical and medical details of different writers and discusses what these details can (in his opinion) tell us about the illnesses they suffered from and what effect it may have had on their writing career. It's surprising readable, although there are passages where the author employs lots of medical jargon that I skipped over.

You should bear in mind, should you choose to read it, that this book is very speculative. So much so in the very first chapter that I almost did not continue reading the book. The opening chapter discusses William Shakespeare and the many references made in his plays to venereal disease, which the author sees as proof-positive that Shakespeare was writing from personal experience, despite little to no factual evidence. He goes on to explain that venereal disease was horrifyingly widespread in Shakespeare's time and as this tells us that anyone living in London at the time would be aware of these diseases, it seems to me absurd to make a case one way or the other. But considering that pretty much everything written about Shakespeare's life is highly speculative, I suppose it's to be expected. The later chapters also have lots of speculation, but also a lot more facts which made it more informative.

Content warning: the author occasionally goes into gory medical details, in particular passages describing painful medical procedures and a few lurid descriptions of venereal disease. (Annoyingly, he seems a bit quick to diagnose people with the latter and discusses it in more detail then is always necessary, which tempts me to subtract another star.)

[Elfbiter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Individuals articles are bit different in their writing style but generally very informative tome. No romanticism artist's ailments, which I despite. Still not for squemish or who have never seen the inside of a hospital

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Joan Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Ross, a ;physician and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School has written a fascinating study of the ailments that afflicted several famed writers such as Shakespeare, Swift, Orwell, Joyce, London, Hawthorne and others. The methods and medications that people were subjected to in earlier days range from the effective to the horrific. Effective, strangely, was the early use of hot tubs to fight the syphilis bacilli which was actually heat-sensitive. Horrific included potions such as “mummy” made from human skulls, preferably those of mummies powdered with viper blood. Ross reports on how these illnesses might be treated today, and also diagnoses those that were inaccurately recorded. He suspects that a number of these creative geniuses suffered from bi-polar syndrome (likely) or Asperger’s (which I think is questionable, as individuals in early times were raised to be reserved, especially in the upper classes, or to maintain a stoic (stiff-upper lip) attitude.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would have been a much better book by a better author. I was really looking forward to it, I really like looking at historical disease through modern medicine, and enjoy non-fiction on the topic. But the author used so many unnecessarily obscure big words I spent so much time looking up words, I'd get distracted and go off doing other things. I don't mind learning new words, but using language like that when a common word would suffice, without enough context to help the reader get the gist without stopping to look up a word, is just arrogant in my opinion. But maybe I wasn't the right audience. Maybe it was written more for lit majors and not science majors. The medical terms were explained, but I had to look up the meaning of, "finding himself incapable of the crepuscular existence of a valetudinarian". A very frustrating read. Two stars because when I could get into the book, it was actually interesting.

[Rick Skwiot · Rating 4 out of 5]

An effective mix of medical history, biography and literary criticism--witty, well researched and well written--that shows diseases (and doctors) doing a lot of harm to a dozen literary icons. Ross gives graphic descriptions of the progress and historic treatments for disease--Shakespeare's syphilis, the Brontes' TB, James Joyce's clap and more--that make one glad to be healthy and living in the 21st century. He also shows how these ailments may have affected the literary output of the afflicted--thematically, qualitatively and quantitatively. The book also reveals Dr. Ross to be a keen and appreciative audience of canonical drama, fiction and poetry. Highly recommended whether your interest is literature or medicine (or, as in the case of Ross, both).

[Denise Ballentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting concept book delving into "The Medical Lives of Famous Writers." Ten long deceased literary figures are examined through the eyes of a modern day physician in an attempt to come up with plausible diagnoses of their recorded symptoms. A great mix of biography, science, history, and medical mystery. How accurate the diagnoses are, I can't say, but I learned much more than just medical facts from reading this book. Recommended!

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable investigation of the medical lives of great writers, based on their own writings, contemporary accounts, historical evidence, and extensive medical knowledge. I really got into this book, and burned through it in a few days. It's a thrill to learn more about the circumstances surrounding, inspiring, and debilitating great authors like Shakespeare, Milton, Yeats, Joyce, the Brontes, Orwell, Melville, Hawthorne, and Swift.

[İrem Hira Yuca Vurucu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çok .. anlamlı benim için bu kitap. Bundan sonra edebiyata “gerçekten” ilgi duyan, merak eden doktor meslektaşlarıma gözüm kapalı önereceğim, hekimler için lezzeti heyecanı hep yüksek tutan bir eser.. Biyografi, fakat tıbbi biyografi(böyle bir tanımlama yoksa da artık var) Ama bir anamnez de okumuyorsunuz, yani bilimsel raporlama da değil. Her şeyden biraz, tam Bulgakov’lara göre. Arada bir de çıkan doktorlara sevgimle..

[Gozde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Çok merak ederek elime aldığım kitabı oldukça zor bitirebildim, çoğu bölüm gereksiz ayrıntılı geldi, belki de türüne uygun olarak değerlendirmek daha doğru olacaktır ama her ele alınan yazarın hastalığıyla ilgili bu kadar fazla bilgi edinmesem de olurdu diye düşünmeden edemedim. Tıp, tarih ve edebiyat alanları açısından incelenmiş ama biraz fazla incelenmiş!

[Kamil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çok ilginç bir kitap. Yazarların hayatını tıbbi açıdan inceliyor. Belirti ve bulguları tıbbi açıdan yorumlama dışında o dönemin tedavi yöntemlerini ve bunlara ait yan etkileri de inceliyor. Tıpla ilgilenen herkesin seveceği türden bir kitap.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, engrossing take on literary biography. Ross is as wonderfully adept at writing about literature and history as he is about medicine.

[Nasser Hashmi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absorbing, if speculative, dissection of writer's anatomies and illnesses. A solid, engaging read.