TB and Fashion

Strange as it may seem, during the 19th century, TB was romanticized, since people believed that the symptoms of the disease enhanced sensitive, artistic dispositions.

French playwright and novelist Alexandre Dumas wrote about the early 1820's in his Mémoires: "It was all the fashion to suffer from chest complaints; everyone was consumptive, poets especially; it was good form to die before reaching the age of thirty."

English poet Lord Byron reportedly said: "I should like to die of consumption [TB] . . . because the ladies would all say, 'Look at that poor Byron, how interesting he looks in dying!'"

American writer Henry David Thoreau, who apparently died of TB, wrote: "Decay and disease are often beautiful, like . . . the hectic glow of consumption."

Commenting on this fascination with TB, an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association stated: "This paradoxical affection for the disease pervaded tastes in fashion; women strove for a pale, fragile look, used whitened makeup, and favored thin, muslin dresses-much like the effect sought by anorectic-looking models today."

Image Credit: New Jersey Medical School—National Tuberculosis Center