The chapters about Shakespeare and Orwell were first published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. He begins with Shakespeare’s tremor and ends with Orwell’s bronchiectasis, and along the way, makes a case for Jonathan Swift’s dementia and describes “the many maladies of Herman Melville.” All the writers lived and died before the mid-twentieth century - effectively the beginning of the modern medical era. Ross serves up much delicious speculation, diagnostic puzzles, and a plethora of grotesque details about assorted physical and mental ailments that afflicted ten literary giants.
There’s definitely evidence cited, more than a few facts and some historical fiction. The book is medical literature - but a mixed genre. Holy crap, I thought, there is a lot of stuff here on syphilis.” I dusted off my battered copy of the Riverside Shakespeare and started leafing through it.
He noted, “I had a recollection from my undergraduate days that the Bard was fond of joking about the great pox. Ross wanted to enliven his presentation on genital infections with a few lines from Shakespeare. It began as a PowerPoint talk about syphilis for medical grand rounds. For would-be writers, the provenance of Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough: The Medical Lives of Famous Writers is noteworthy.
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