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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Chapter 2, according to what ancient physician did tumors resemble crabs?

2. When did Kafka write to a friend from a sanitorium two months before he died?

3. Where did Insarov, the hero of On the Eve, die?

4. What did people believe cancer patients lacked that caused them to get the disease?

5. When did the Concourt brothers write about TB in their novel Madame Gervaisais?

Short Essay Questions

1. Which economic spheres are affected by tuberculosis and by cancer?

2. Who invented the cult of TB?

3. How were metaphors of TB broken up in the twentieth century?

4. What is the origin of the word tuberculosis?

5. When was it possible to separate the conception of TB and cancer?

6. How might the name of a disease seem to have a magic power?

7. What conversation did Byron have with his friend Tom Moore in 1828?

8. At the time the book was written, what did many people believe about cancer?

9. How was TB romanticized by the mid-eighteenth century?

10. What example does Sontag provide of sex being prescribed to tuberculars as therapy?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Metaphors used to describe cancer and tuberculosis changed over time. How did the metaphors used to describe cancer and tuberculosis change over time? What does etymology reveal about those changes?

Essay Topic 2

Both TB and cancer were depicted as diseases of passion. Why were TB and cancer both depicted as diseases of passion? How was the passion that led to TB and that led to cancer in opposition? How did the myths about TB and cancer depict both diseases as diseases of passion?

Essay Topic 3

Susan Sontag is the author of Illness as Metaphor. Why did Sontag write Illness as Metaphor?

(see the answer keys)

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