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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. At the time the book was written, when was TB thought to be incurable?
(a) 1700s.
(b) 1800s.
(c) Last 200 years.
(d) Last century.

2. In Chapter 2, according to what ancient physician did tumors resemble crabs?
(a) Antipater.
(b) Damocrates.
(c) Zopyrus.
(d) Galen.

3. When did Goldsmith write about a diet that would correct consumption?
(a) 1741.
(b) 1737.
(c) 1768.
(d) 1759.

4. When did Alice James die from cancer?
(a) 1892.
(b) 1890.
(c) 1888.
(d) 1876.

5. What does Sontag say about how cancer enters a person's life in Chapter 1?
(a) Tears down defenses.
(b) Does not knock before it enters.
(c) Exposes weakness.
(d) Barges in the door.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why did Michel in Gide's The Immoralist contract TB?

2. What was the thwarted passion that killed Insarov in On the Eve?

3. What diseases have been encumbered by the trappings of metaphor?

4. When did Shelley write to Keats and comment on his appearance of consumption?

5. What is the subject of Sontag's book?

Short Essay Questions

1. How might the name of a disease seem to have a magic power?

2. What does Sontag reveal about metaphor and tuberculosis (TB) and cancer?

3. How was TB seen as a disease of passion?

4. What is the history of the use of a synonym for TB?

5. Why does Sontag believe that cancer patients were not told about their illness, but patients with cardiac disease were told about their condition?

6. What example does Sontag provide of sex being prescribed to tuberculars as therapy?

7. When was it possible to separate the conception of TB and cancer?

8. Why did Insarov, the hero in Turgenev's On the Eve, get TB and die?

9. What is the origin of the word tuberculosis?

10. How was TB romanticized by the mid-eighteenth century?

(see the answer keys)

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