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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. When did English surgeon Sir Astley Cooper find grief and anxiety to be among the most frequent causes of breast cancer?

2. In what Greek writings did disease occur as supernatural punishment, demonic possession, or natural causes?

3. Where did Keats die?

4. What did Kafka believe that his illness was a sign of?

5. What disease in Chapter 5 reduces a person to a "sick environment" (37)?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Kant say about passion and cancer?

2. Why was syphilis and its origin not mysterious?

3. What observations did Galen make regarding women who got breast cancer?

4. Why was syphilis limited as a metaphor?

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

6. What did Joseph Severn write was done to Keats' room a couple weeks after his death?

7. What two hypotheses does Sontag discuss regarding the expansion of illness?

8. In The Magic Mountain how did tuberculosis affect Hans Castorp?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How did the idea that man created his disease lead to the concept that the sick person caused his illness? What dangers were there in this concept?

Essay Topic 2

There was a divergence in the metaphorical descriptions of TB and cancer. How did the metaphorical descriptions of TB and cancer diverge? How and why did technology create the divergence?

Essay Topic 3

Some metaphors for TB and cancer were taken from economics. What metaphors for TB and cancer were taken from economics? Is economics a more apt metaphor for TB or for cancer?

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