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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Chapter 1, if a disease was treated as a mystery to be feared, how would it be felt to be?

2. When did Marie Bashkirtsev die?

3. When did Kafka write to a friend from a sanitorium two months before he died?

4. When did Goldsmith write about a diet that would correct consumption?

5. By what time had TB already acquired the assocation of being romantic?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. When and why was it possible to separate the definitions of cancer from TB?

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

4. How did the metaphor of TB provide for two contradictory applications?

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

6. How did the apperance of tuberculosis become a staple of nineteenth-century manners?

7. Who invented the cult of TB?

8. What passion did people think would given them cancer if not discharged, and what example is provided of that belief?

9. How did a character in The Magic Mountain explain symptoms of disease?

10. How did Sontag see people treated who had cancer, and why?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the mid-eighteenth century tuberculosis was romanticized. Why was TB romanticized? How was it perceived to make people interesting?

Essay Topic 2

Some scientific studies seemed to link emotion and cancer. How did some scientific studies seem to link emotion and cancer? Why does Sontag believe that any apparent link between cancer and emotion is due to incomplete knowledge about cancer, its causes, and a cure?

Essay Topic 3

Disease metaphors have been used to describe society and politics. How have disease metaphors been used to describe society and politics? What problems are there with using disease metaphors to describe society and politics?

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