A totally nonscientific, fear-based trip through tuberculosis, as taken by one anxious, poem-hoarding Word Raccoon.

NOT LISTENING TO:
This playlist John Green posted once: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E4EHcWZKczEPM?si=KrVm99kNQwCXfakPA6EFFw

ALSO NOT LISTENING TO: The Mountain Goats – Sunset Tree

Now Playing: ~~Toys in the Attic, Aerosmith~~. (For now. Nope, can’t land on anything today. Oh well…)

I tried setting the vibe for this with John Green’s musical tastes, but I have a feeling I’m gonna have to find Drema Sass music and be happy. The word raccoon has dressed me today (my hubby’s castoff porkpie hat, a purple tee with some sort of an animal print at the bottom though I don’t DO animal print– there’s an explanation, but not now) anyhow, I don’t trust her to give me writing fluid, too.

Let’s start with a definition, shall we?

“The White Plague” was a 19th-century nickname for tuberculosis, called that because it spread like wildfire and left people looking ghostly and worn down.

I should probably confess I’ve got a bit of a literary crush on John Green.

Not just because he writes like the world is on fire and still somehow manages to sound like he’s offering you a cup of tea—but because he feels like one of us: anxious, trying to make a dent in the world with his writing. His new book, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, has been sitting on my metaphorical nightstand, quietly judging me. (It’s strictly literary, my crush, kinda like when I was a kid and was into Speedy Racer.)

I haven’t read it yet. I’m scared of what I might learn—about tuberculosis, yes, but also about how close fear and fascination can live in the same ribcage. I do watch his YouTube videos religiously, though. The way he tugs at that crest of hair when he’s nervous. The soft, fierce way he loves his brother Hank. And when Hank was diagnosed with cancer, I found myself worrying almost as much for John as I did for Hank. But they both made it.

So, because I apparently cope by writing poems and Googling Victorian death statistics, I wrote this poem:

Everything Is Tuberculosis (And Other Things I Fear, Too, But Call Me, John)

They are out there
training African rats to sniff out
land mines
and maybe, I hear, even
tuberculosis.

Someone get John Green
on the phone.
He says everything is tuberculosis—

like that guy in
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
who traces (spuriously)
every word back to Greek.

It must be exhausting
to someone with anxiety.

I get it.

You want to know what’s out there
but then, oh god, you know.
Which is only marginally better.
And is tuberculosis now something I
should be looking out for,
skulking on every street corner,
and, I don’t know, lurking on dollar bills?

Doesn’t matter how you really get it,
it’s dangerous for women writers
&
Their Characters.
I know you’ve read the classics.
Emily &
Anne &
Julia &
Elizabeth
God, I want to read your book, but can I bear it?

White plague
Everywhere.

Hey John,
maybe everything is
tuberculosis.
*Squeezes eyes shut*
Unless it’s not.
I never doubted you.
Just wanted to.

Real-Life Women Writers Felled by the White Plague (Only a Sampling)

Emily Brontë
Author of Wuthering Heights, she died at 30 from tuberculosis, refusing medical help until the very end. Because who needs doctors when you have moors and ghosts? Sad face.
Anne Brontë
The youngest Brontë, passed at 29 from TB. Her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall tackled alcoholism and women’s independence—scandalous at the time.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A prolific poet, she battled chronic illness, likely tuberculosis, throughout her life, dying at 55. Yikes! Her love letters with Robert Browning are kinda hot.
Adelaide Anne Procter
A favorite poet of Queen Victoria, Procter died at 38 from TB. She was also an activist, because being a poet wasn’t tragic enough.
Julia C. Collins
Considered the first Black woman to publish a novel, she died of tuberculosis at 23, leaving her work The Curse of Caste unfinished. That’s going on my TBR if I can find a link.
Katherine Mansfield
Wrote luminous, aching modernist stories while slowly dying of TB. Her prose still aches. Woolf was said to be jealous of her writing, a bit. Scanning her short story titles again, I’m pretty sure we’re literary kin. It’s been too long.
Angelina Weld Grimké
Black poet, playwright, and educator—haunted by grief and the shadows of disease. Died at 74, after a life steeped in illness and brilliance. “A Mona Lisa” is one to read and re-read.

Literary and Stage Heroines Who Carried Handkerchiefs – A Quick Dip

Marguerite Gautier (La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils)
The OG tragic courtesan, Marguerite dies of tuberculosis, inspiring Verdi’s La Traviata. She practically set the standard for glamorous death by consumption.
Mildred (Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham)
Not saintly. Not tragic in a pretty way. Just sick, spiteful, and complex. TB doesn’t redeem her—it just gives her more time to wreck things. I love to hate her.
Fantine (Les Misérables by Victor Hugo)
After selling her hair, teeth, and dignity, Fantine succumbs to TB. Dang.
Mimi (La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini)
The quintessential bohemian waif with a handkerchief.
Beth March (Little Women by Louisa May Alcott)
Sweet, selfless Beth contracts scarlet fever, but many adaptations lean into the TB aesthetic—pale, gentle, and doomed. (So she’s a MAYBE. But still…)
Nancy (Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens)
While not explicitly stated, Nancy exhibits many symptoms of TB before meeting a violent end. Because Dickens liked to double down on the misery.
Violetta Valéry (La Traviata)
Sings her last aria with blood in her handkerchief. High society, high drama, and high mortality.

Who are these lists missing? Hit me up. Especially you, John. In the meantime, I’m thinking it’s time I return to my novel.