Orwell's Cough: Diagnosing the Medical Maladies and Last Gasps of the Great Writers

by John J. Ross

Literary muses meet medical complaints in this marvellous look at the Bard, the Brontës, Milton, Swift, Joyce, and more

“The doctor suddenly appeared beside Will, startling him. Though he smiled reassuringly, the poet noticed that he kept a safe distance. In a soothing, urbane voice, he explained the stewed prunes to evacuate the bowels; succulent meats to ease digestion; cinnabar and the sweating tub… Desperate diseases called for desperate remedies.”

Did Will Shakespeare’s doctors addle his brain with cinnabar and mercury? Was Jane Eyre inspired by the plagued school that claimed the Brontë clan? Did writing 1984 kill George Orwell? Dr John Ross of Harvard Medical School opens his surgery to consult with the likes of Milton, Swift, Melville, Joyce, and Jack London, exploring the history of medicine as never before, from the Bard’s cloaked visits to Southwark to cure his unsavoury rashes to the arsenic-and-horse-serum jabs given for Yeats’s fevers. With novelistic flair and deep expertise, Ross reveals a wholly absorbing new view on the writer’s life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Medical, History

290 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 4, 2012

Reviews

[Nirathya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book let me take a little (but much longed for) peek into the minds of some of literature's finest. I always wondered what goes into writing a great piece of art and this book somewhat helped me make sense of everything from the Bronte sisters' morbid works, to Milton's blind masterpiece. And as an added bonus, being a medical student, it was thoroughly amusing to learn the history of medicine like never before. Human skull powder for gout and foxes' lungs for the treatment of asthma? Give me more, Dr. John Ross! This was one hell of an interesting read and one that I'd recommend to all lovers of literature/medicine!

[Andrew Hodgson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed it on levels of literary biography and medicine. I’ve joked about diagnosing everyone in the past with autism, and this book does stray toward that, but otherwise the diagnoses are very interesting. Well written and fun.

[I Drink Ink · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d give this about a 3.75. Super interesting. I wasn’t really a fan of the little fictional intros of some of the chapters. It was odd how some had them and others didn’t. And I didn’t really like the ones that had them, it pulled me out of the history feel of it, so to speak. But that’s more a stylistic opinion, than a flaw. You could tell the love Ross had for some of the subjects he was writing about. A lot of it was speculation, but then, speculation is what historians do more often than not. I felt a little hesitant about the amount of times authors were labeled with Aspergers. But ultimately it got me fascinated by authors I hadn’t really considered before - in particular Milton and Joyce.

[The Bookish Wombat · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Ross looks at the lives, illnesses and deaths of several famous writers in an attempt to see what modern medicine would have diagnosed. Each of the 10 chapters consists of a potted biography of the writer (or writers in the case of the chapter on the Brontes) and a discussion of their maladies, how these were treated and their invariable unhappy endings.

Some of the chapters seem to speculate much more than others - for example the first chapter on Shakespeare does not present enough evidence to make its case. It also takes a fair bit of this evidence from the man's works, but being able to demonstrate that Shakespeare knew about a particular illness and its treatment doesn't necessarily mean that he had it.

The book is enjoyable for fans of literature, history and the history of medicine. As I'm in the first two camps I found that there was a little too much medical detail, I'm sure those of a more scientific bent would disagree.

I was disappointed, however, that only one of the 10 chapters dealt with women authors - this made the book feel too male and did not redress the balance of many centuries of male-only doctors.

Despite this though, I liked the book and would recommend to anyone looking for something a bit different in non-fiction.

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially I loved the book, but the more I read I discovered that the author had only a few ideas to explain the pecularities of a person´s character. Namely, most of them apparently suffered from Asperger's or had syphilis and/or bi-polar disorder. That is not the whole spectrum! We all (or at least some of us) have those tendencies to be a bit awkward or socially inadept, that doesn't mean we all have Asperger's syndrome. It is a fashionable diagnose and it is pinned on every other patient nowadays, because it is (relatively) new and noone really understands the condition.
And I also would like to have had more variety on the cases.
Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable read, well written and gripping like only non-fiction/reality can be. No need for fiction when you have reality which is often ten times more bizzarre in the rear view mirror that any sci/fi.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very interesting stuff in this - but also some infelicities of style and grammar, not to mention strange vocabulary (which seemed to have been inserted purely for effect), all of which detracted from my enjoyment of the subject matter. Sometimes verged on the banal. Very much a "could do better" sort of book.

[Alison Loftus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is unlike anything i have ever read.
It delivers weird and wonderful information about the most famous writers including William Shakespeare. In addition it gives a brilliant insight to old age medicine and surgery techniques that often did more bad than good.
I would recommend this to anyone that is interested in historic medicine or anyone who enjoys reading about real life

[Geoff Cumberbeach · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely interesting read. It gives snapshots of the writers lives, work and troubles, especially medical maladies. The remedies the doctors used in ancient times were eye opening. An enjoyable and easy read.

[Derelict Space Sheep · Rating 3 out of 5]

42 WORD REVIEW:

Whereas the medical diagnoses alone would have made for a much shorter book, (Dr) Ross has used the subject of medicine as a unifying theme by which to biograph and contextualise a dozen famous writers, astutely dissecting their lives and (squalid) times.

[Nitin Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Queer, witty and informative. Hats off to the author for his idea. He chooses to research the maladies in lives of various famous literature stalwarts to pen their crisp biographies. And he touches upon the seriousness of illnesses and deaths with humor albeit sensitively.

[Bernard O'Leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 50/50 blend of literary history and epidemiology. Good fun.