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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. What diseases tended to strike each person as a member of an afflicted community in Chapter 5?

2. At what medical school did Dr. Caroline Bedell Thomas work?

3. Where was Lawrence LeShan a psychologist and psychotherapist?

4. When did Katherine Mansfield write in her Journal that she needed to heal herself before she could be well?

5. Who did Groddeck say staged the drama of disease?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did the contrast between passions change according to Sontag in Chapter 6?

2. In the nineteenth century, what did disease have to do with the will?

3. In Chapter 5, what example does Sontag present of how cancer was viewed as a disease that caused a person to finally behave well?

4. Before the tubercle bacillus was discovered, what did a standard medical textbook list as the causes of tuberculosis?

5. How were the cancer-prone and the TB-prone persons described in Chapter 5?

6. How did the fantasies about TB in the nineteenth century relate to ideals of capitalist accumulation?

7. How did the ideas connecting TB and emotions change, and how does Sontag relate that change to cancer?

8. What correlation did doctors see between cancer and complaints?

9. What did Katherine Mansfield think made her sick, and how did John Middleton Murry critique her thoughts?

10. How was disease viewed by the Greek in Chapter 6?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Chapter 5, Sontag compares and contrasts cholera and tuberculosis. How does Sontag compare and contrast cholera and TB? What is communicated about individuality and community through contrast and comparison?

Essay Topic 2

How did the Greeks and Christian view disease? Why did they both believe disease could be divine punishment?

Essay Topic 3

Both TB and cancer were depicted as diseases of passion. Why were TB and cancer both depicted as diseases of passion? How was the passion that led to TB and that led to cancer in opposition? How did the myths about TB and cancer depict both diseases as diseases of passion?

(see the answer keys)

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