“For more than a century and a half, tuberculosis provided a metaphoric equivalent for delicacy, sensitivity, sadness, [and] powerlessness […] pathology of energy […] hyperactivity alternating with languidness […] white pallor and red flush […] it is a disease thought to be multi-determined (that is, mysterious) that have the widest possibilities as metaphors […] it was an existential illness that defined and redefined its victims […] portraying women stricken with the glamorous wasting disease […] women paradoxically function as a beautiful allegory for dying” (Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American essayist and writer in Illness as Metaphor 1978) (Dickon & Gonzalez, 2019).
Citation: Poças, J. M. D. (2026). Tuberculosis and the Artistic Creation: A Historical Account of a Disease both Romantic and Tragic. J Psychol Neurosci; 8(4):1-17. DOI : https://doi.org/10.47485/2693-2490.1168