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?

Papa says that he's going to tell Herbert no, and Elsie says that Herbert said that a refusal would kill him. He responds, "I don't believe it; people don't die so easily." Has he forgotten that his own daughter nearly died of the threat of Catholicism?

Shakespearian types...is Macbeth too much for a 12 year old?

I don't think so. The characters are very straight forward and the themes are pretty simple: envy, revenge, ambition. I think younger kids would eat up the magical aspects and enjoy Macbeth's journey from loyal soldier to murderer.

Beverly made me snort Diet Coke. The funny burns.

Wikipedia is such fun:

Folklore

Before the Industrial Revolution, tuberculosis may sometimes have been regarded as vampirism. When one member of a family died from it, the other members that were infected would lose their health slowly. People believed that this was caused by the original victim draining the life from the other family members. Furthermore, people who had TB exhibited symptoms similar to what people considered to be vampire traits. People with TB often have symptoms such as red, swollen eyes (which also creates a sensitivity to bright light), pale skin, extremely low body heat, a weak heart and coughing blood, suggesting the idea that the only way for the afflicted to replenish this loss of blood was by sucking blood.[98] Another folk belief attributed it to being forced, nightly, to attend fairy revels, so that the victim wasted away owing to lack of rest; this belief was most common when a strong connection was seen between the fairies and the dead.[99] Similarly, but less commonly, it was attributed to the victims being "hagridden"—being transformed into horses by witches (hags) to travel to their nightly meetings, again resulting in a lack of rest.[99]

TB was romanticized in the nineteenth century. Many people believed TB produced feelings of euphoria referred to as "Spes phthisica" or "hope of the consumptive". It was believed that TB sufferers who were artists had bursts of creativity as the disease progressed. It was also believed that TB sufferers acquired a final burst of energy just before they died which made women more beautiful and men more creative.[100] In the early 20th century, some believed TB to be caused by masturbation.[101]

Love that little sentence there at the end. "Oh yeah, and there was the diddling theory."

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

It could have been, but in Mac's case, they were still worried about his vision after he recovered from the fever, whereas for Mary, the damage was done while she was sick.