Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough by John J. Ross

Ross observes that many of his problems seem to have cleared up once he actually became blind. Much is known about the long deterioration of Milton’s vision and other particulars of his delicate health, but Dr. The story of the blind poet John Milton runs for a while along similar lines. The discovery that Shakespeare was apparently obsessed with syphilis (and suspiciously familiar with its symptoms) hooked Dr. Ross, a Harvard physician, writes that he stumbled into the field by accident while trying to enliven a lecture on syphilis with a few literary references. These pleasures are present in abundance in the newest addition to the genre of medical biography, “Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough.” Dr. As we contemplate the poor health of historic notables, we can sigh gustily at the immense suffering our ancestors considered routine, wince at the lunatic treatments they so innocently underwent, and marvel over and over again that the body, the brain and the mind can take such divergent paths. What makes antique case histories like Yeats’s so compelling to research, so interesting to read? Admittedly, they have educational value - medicine moves forward by looking back - but their major attraction is undoubtedly the operatic vigor of their emotional punch. He still had three poetically productive years ahead of him before he died of heart failure in 1939, at age 73. In fact, what the doctor had there was William Butler Yeats: the poet had a long list of chronic medical problems and experienced one of his regular cardiac crises while wintering in Spain. “What we have here,” said his new Spanish doctor, “is an antique cardiorenal sclerotic of advanced years.” The old Irishman was a swollen, wheezing mess, blood pressure wildly out of control, kidneys failing, heart fibrillating.

Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough by John J. Ross