SOURCE: An introduction to Tuberculosis and Genius, University of Chicago Press, 1940, pp. ix-xxxiii.

In the following excerpt, Moorman speculates on the possible connection between tuberculosis and literary genius.

Disregarding certain mythological references, including the vague, symptomatic pictures found in the songs of Orpheus and in the Homeric poems, we are convinced that the serious study of history justifies the belief that tuberculosis may have been the first-born of the mother of pestilence and disease. Exhumed skeletons of prehistoric periods bear the marks of tuberculosis. Thus we see that before the time of recorded history tuberculosis left an ineradicable record of its ravages. The code of Hammurabi, written before 2,000 B.C., indicates a knowledge of the disease. In Deuteronomy (seventh century B.C.) we find: "The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever and with an inflammation." In the fifth century B.C. Hippocrates and...