Everything Is Tuberculosis: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Spes phthisica, in addition to heightening creative talent, was also assumed to improve women’s physical beauty. TB caused patients to become “pale and thin with rosy cheeks and wide sunken eyes,” which then became signals of beauty in both the US and Europe. These beauty standards persist even today, with small bodies being “naturally” associated with beauty, even though this beauty standard is another social construction. Once again, this romanticization of the disease does not put an end to stigmatization, as delicacy could just as quickly be described as weakness.

Such beauty standards were so influential that women were told to do everything to match them, including avoiding outdoor and physical activity. Women applied belladonna to their eyes to make them appear wider. Contemporary literature and art reflect these shifts in beauty standards, depicting consumptive women as the peak of femininity and beauty. Some trends in fashion are also thought to be influenced by the romanticization of TB. Some believe corsets were made with the purpose of limiting breath, thus emulating symptoms of TB, but historians are wary of such a claim. In fact, some people believed that corsets caused consumption, a belief that also applied to items such as thin shoes. Fashion historians are much more likely to stand by the latter point.

These beauty standards were further tied to whiteness, with pale skin being a necessity to qualify as truly beautiful. It was subsequently assumed that consumption was a “disease of civilization” or, in blunter words, of white people. Most white doctors in the West believed that TB only affected white people and that Black people were dying of a different disease. In a society that prioritized colonialism and white supremacy, acknowledging that TB affected not only the “superior” race but also the marginalized would disrupt society’s understanding of both TB and colonialism.