The later part of the Victorian era brought significant change in the way that the Victorians understood tuberculosis and how it spread. Tuberculosis was deadly, yet many lived for years with the disease impacting their everyday life. It was popular in literature due to the slow nature of the disease; characters could waste away with it while still being a part of the narrative. Susan Sontag described the mythology of the disease, saying that “…there is generally some passionate feeling which provokes, which expresses itself, in a bout of TB” (22).

In March 1882, Robert Koch announced that his discovery of the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. This discovery began to change the way that the Victorians thought about the disease and how it functioned in society. Prior to this, the popularly held belief was that tuberculosis was hereditary and was transmitted from parent to child. This belief was used to uphold eugenic propaganda of the time (Tankard 23). In 1883, an article from The British Medical Journal acknowledged the potential for tuberculosis to spread between people, but described the communicability as the exception to the rule of heritability (984). Though they did not currently hold the belief that tuberculosis was being spread amongst populations, the inclusion of the idea that it could be communicable was a start. That same year, a newspaper featured a letter to the editor that said there was not yet proof of tuberculosis being contagious (Bell 7). In one edition of The Liverpool Mercury, the communicability of the disease was questioned, as a writer argued that it is bad logic and bad science to assume that the disease is communicable because the majority of deaths resulted in cases where the heritability was traceable (3). At this point, there were still major divisions about the transmissibility of the disease but perspectives were beginning to shift.

An 1888 description on the congress of hygiene stated that “The evidence lately obtained, a definite microbe always co-exists with it, tends to support a belief long held by many persons, that the malady is capable of being communicated from the diseased to the healthy” (The Times 9). This shift indicates the popularity of the concept of the communicability of the disease. Two years later, in 1890, Koch announced that he had found a cure for tuberculosis. His tuberculin was said to be able to treat those infected, however, neither Koch nor other researchers fully understood tuberculin and how it worked. Though his supposed cure did not actually work, it brought a new attitude toward the research of tuberculosis. In 1897, while discussing the progress made in medicine during the Victorian era, tuberculosis was listed as one of the illnesses that was being worked toward as researchers looked for was to provide immunity against it.

Though tuberculosis is the focus of this research, a deeper understanding of the ways in which Victorian understanding of illness could change is useful in contextualizing some of the illness we see in the literature from the time. In Jane Eyre, Helen’s death from tuberculosis rather than typhus makes her death separate and more significant than the deaths of the other students. Her suffering is romanticized and her death is a more spiritual one due to her pious nature that is seen as she shows patience and faith. Though in The Woman in White, Marian does not have tuberculosis, it is still worth examining the way that the doctors treat her and the way the people view her illness, and what it means for Marian’s character once she is well again.

Additionally, the advancements in science and medicine that can be seen by a study of the research on tuberculosis can show how early understandings of the disease led to much of the literature that features it. The bacterial origins were not clear and the notion of heritability combined with the romanticized suffering of the consumptive made for a disease that was used as a storytelling device for characters whose suffering could be read as a lesson of some sort.

Works Cited

Anderson, Garrett. “An Address On The Progress Of Medicine In The Victorian Era.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 1900, May 1897, pp. 1338–39. EBSCOhost, discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=f597ba2f-b3eb-31d4-b472-28d5cc3c5128.

Bell, Ernest. Letter. The Guardian [London, England]. 21 Feb. 1883, p. 7.

"Dr. Koch On Tuberculosis." The Times [London, England], 15 Nov. 1890, p. 15-16.

Gradmann, C. “Robert Koch and the Pressures of Scientific Research: Tuberculosis and Tuberculin.” Medical History, vol. 45, no. 1, Jan. 2001, pp. 1–32. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0025727300000028.

“‘Is Consumption Hereditary?” The Liverpool Mercury. 11 May, 1886, p. 3.

“Latest Intelligence.” The Times [London, England], 10 Aug. 1889, p. 9.

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor; and, AIDS and Its Metaphors. Picador, 2001.

Tankard, Alex. “The Victorian Consumptive in Disability Studies.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, Jan. 2011, p. 17. EBSCOhost, discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=a9703e9d-f6bc-30a7-ba24-b810aefbea52.

“The Communicability Of Phthisis.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 1194, Nov. 1883, pp. 983–84. EBSCOhost, discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=b85bcb6d-b134-31aa-bafb-d1a0f8ce8dff.