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Orwell's Cough: Diagnosing the Medical Maladies and Last Gasps of the Great Writers
Unavailable
Orwell's Cough: Diagnosing the Medical Maladies and Last Gasps of the Great Writers
Unavailable
Orwell's Cough: Diagnosing the Medical Maladies and Last Gasps of the Great Writers
Ebook379 pages5 hours

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

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About this ebook

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 treatment: 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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 4, 2012
ISBN9781780741130
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Orwell's Cough: Diagnosing the Medical Maladies and Last Gasps of the Great Writers
Author

John Ross

John Ross is a full-time artist that specializes in print making.

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Rating: 3.8636364272727275 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An excellent little book with fascinating historical as well as medical connotations easy to read for the lay reader
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.