[Fictional texts on the history of medicine. Klabund's narrative Die Krankheit ("The Disease")].
Klabund's narrative Die Krankheit (1917), which transforms the disease tuberculosis into a protagonist, conveys a graphic account of the life within the sanatorium of the Swiss town of Davos. While the various diagnostic and therapeutic methods are described in detail, the text also focuses on the patients' everyday routines and the way of life within the sanatorium. This article also addresses the question to what extent literary texts can be of interest for the medical historian. Not only the realistic details that I will disclose through a careful analysis but also the inherent critical remarks on contemporary medicine are instructive. Furthermore, we have to take the literary tradition into account. Klabund's narrative contains numerous intertextual references and includes both mythological and symbolical aspects while producing an interpretation of tuberculosis that is peculiar (and essential) to this text.
Max
Katrin
K
Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg. katrin.max@uni-wuerzburg.de
D005197:Famous Persons; D006663:Historiography; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008093:Literature, Modern / Q000266:history*; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D013557:Switzerland; D014376:Tuberculosis / Q000266:history*