Surrounded as they were by such rapturous depictions of tuberculous women, perhaps it’s no surprise that doctors romanticized the disease, too. An 1833 article in The London Medical and Surgical Journal actually praises tuberculosis for being so wonderfully photogenic: “Some diseases are borne in silence and concealment, because their phenomena are calculated to excite disgust; to others, the result of vicious courses, the stigma of disgrace is attached; unsightly ravages of the human frame, or the wreck of the mental faculties, inspire us with horror rather than with sympathy; but
...more
