Is the Criticism of John Keats’s Doctors Justified? A Bicentenary Re-Appraisal

Abstract

John Keats died of consumption in Italy on 23 February 1821. He was treated both in London and in Rome by eminent physicians who have over time been criticized for failing to diagnose that Keats had pulmonary tuberculosis. The evidence for this censure, from the letters of Keats and his companions, along with the publications of Dr James Clark, his physician in Rome, is reviewed and the contemporary treatment of consumption in the early part of the nineteenth century is analysed. We argue that Keats’s doctors have been unfairly castigated by modern scholars and that in fact they applied the medical advice for the treatment of consumption that was available at that time.