SOURCE: "Introduction: Disease and Art," in Disease and the Novel, 1880-1960, The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1985, pp. 1-18.

In the following excerpt, Meyers examines works by nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors that reveal differing attitudes and ideas relating to disease.

I

Disease and the Novel explores an important theme in modern fiction. The Death of Ivan Ilych, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," The Immoralist, The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, The Black Swan, The Rack and Cancer Ward concern the mental and physical changes that take place when a character is attacked by disease—cancer, gangrene, tuberculosis, syphilis—and threatened by death. In all these novels illness isolates, exposes, intensifies and transforms character; structures the work as we follow the progress of the diseased heroes to recovery, remission, invalidism or death. These works portray what Freud calls the "pathology of cultural communities," the sickness of society. For the effect of disease on...