Tuberculosis most often presents in the lungs, but can infect any part of the body. It cripples by eroding the joints and vertebrae. It's a terrible disease, and in the 19th and early 20th century, it infected 20 percent or more people in certain areas and was almost always a death sentence. Because it takes a while to be fatal and there's a lot of suffering, it's the perfect disease for the 19th century novel, allowing for lovely deathbed scenes.

My great-grandmother died of tuberculosis when my grandmother was 12, leaving her to care for her three siblings, one of whom died of TB a few years later.

Elsie, by the way, is being a coward. She doesn't want to marry him, and is counting on her father saying no so that she doesn't have to be the one to tell Herbert no.

That's one of the upsides to being completely under Daddy's thumb. Daddy gets to do the nay saying.

While I wouldn't rule out syph, TB does infect bone sometimes. There's a variant called Potts Disease that affects the spine—it's probably what Alexander Pope had. It also can affect joints so causing a limp doesn't seem out of the question.

But isn't TB also contagious? When he was first sick, Elsie sat by him and read to him and talked to him all the time, which was why I'd assumed it was a broken hip, until they started talking about the disease returning.

But isn't TB also contagious? When he was first sick, Elsie sat by him and read to him and talked to him all the time

Well, we know that. But in the 1800s people would be shut up with TB sufferers for hours on end, nursing and caring for them. That's probably how Keats got it from his brother, who Keats nursed until the brother died from TB. Modern epidemiology didn't really take off until after Snow and the whole London cholera thing.

Also, he first got sick when he was about seven, which I think would most likely rule out syphilis.

((hearts the London cholera thing. I mean, not the cholera, cholera thing, but.))

But isn't TB also contagious?

Pasteur didn't discover germs until 1860 and it took a long time after that for people to give up the notions like TB was caused by miasmas, the night air or a delicate constitution.

Mysterious illinesses were popular in Victorian lit. Remember Mac's fever that threatened his vision in Alcott's Eight Cousins? I could never figure out how that worked.

My great-grandmother died of tuberculosis when my grandmother was 12,

One of my great-grandmothers died of TB when my grandfather was about 13. He never really got over that.

But isn't TB also contagious? When he was first sick, Elsie sat by him and read to him and talked to him all the time, which was why I'd assumed it was a broken hip, until they started talking about the disease returning

My great-grandmother caught the disease because she'd been caring for a friend with it.

eta I can't remember they year exactly but would have been around 1925.

Well, didn't Laura Ingalls Wilder's sister lose her sight to Scarlet Fever? Couldn't that have been it?