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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. According to Schopenhauer, what did the presence of disease indicate was sick?

2. In Chapter 5, what disease did Hans Castorp have?

3. In Chapter 5, where was Gustav von Aschenbach?

4. In Les Liaisons dangereuses, what illness did Madame de Merteuil have?

5. When did Kafka write to Milena that his TB was caused by his mental disease?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Katherine Mansfield think made her sick, and how did John Middleton Murry critique her thoughts?

2. In Death in Venice, how did disease affect Gustav von Achenbach?

3. How did the contrast between passions change according to Sontag in Chapter 6?

4. How did the ideas connecting TB and emotions change, and how does Sontag relate that change to cancer?

5. In The Magic Mountain how did tuberculosis affect Hans Castorp?

6. Before the tubercle bacillus was discovered, what did a standard medical textbook list as the causes of tuberculosis?

7. In Chapter 5, what example does Sontag present of how cancer was viewed as a disease that caused a person to finally behave well?

8. How did the fantasies about TB in the nineteenth century relate to ideals of capitalist accumulation?

9. How were the conceptions of and treatements for TB patients and mental paitents similar?

10. What observations did Galen make regarding women who got breast cancer?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Chapter 5, Sontag compares and contrasts cholera and tuberculosis. How does Sontag compare and contrast cholera and TB? What is communicated about individuality and community through contrast and comparison?

Essay Topic 2

Culture and psychology were used to explain illness. How were culture and psychology used to explain illness? What did psychologizing disease seem to provide? What did it seem to undermine?

Essay Topic 3

Footnotes are notes, explanations, or comments usually shown at the bottom of a page of text. What is the purpose of footnotes? What benefits are there to using footnotes? How and why does Sontag use footnotes in the text?

(see the answer keys)

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