Bacteria don’t infect people based on their personality traits or income. However, given the glamor and status associated with the disease, Beddoes came to the conclusion that women were deliberately contracting consumption to look more chic. Tragically, the fetishization of this sickly physical ideal did indeed lead some women who were naturally healthy to become sickly, even if they did not contract consumption itself.
So how did they die, if they did not have consumption? Vitamin deficiency? ÷xhaustion? Organ failure? Starvation?
