Interesting People - Jane Austen

Jane Austen probably didn't die of Addison's disease, but of tuberculosis (TB) - commonly caught from drinking infected milk.

(Katherine White, the chair of the Addison's Disease Self-Help Group, said that "as Ms Austen wrote that she had a clear head and scarcely any pain, we can conclude that it is most likely she did not die from Addison's". In the UK in 1815, one in four deaths in England was from consumption (now known as TB).)

Comments