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This is a list of famous people and celebrities who had, or are believed to have had, tuberculosis, also known as consumption.

Writers and poets

• Maksim Bahdanovič
• Honoré de Balzac
• Manuel Bandeira, Brazilian poet, had TB in 1904 and expressed the effects of the disease in his life in many of his poems.
• Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
• Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), fiction writer remembered for his book Looking Backward, died from tuberculosis.
• Jonas Biliūnas
• Anne and Emily Brontë and other members of the Brontë family of writers, poets and painters were struck by TB. Anne, their brother Branwell, and Emily all died of it within 2 years of each other. Charlotte Brontë's death in 1855 was stated at the time as having been due to TB, but there is some controversy over this today.
• Charles Brockden Brown
• Charles Farrar Browne
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet, died of tuberculosis in 1861.
• Jean de Brunhoff
• Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), American author and poet, contracted TB in 1988; he recovered, losing 60 lbs.
• Robert Burns
• Albert Camus, French writer, playwright, activist, and existentialist philosopher, suffered from TB. He was forced to drop out of school (University of Algiers) due to severe attacks of tuberculosis. However, his death was caused by a car accident.
• Anton Chekhov
• Tristan Corbière
• Stephen Crane
• René Daumal
• Nikolay Dobrolyubov
• Paul Laurence Dunbar
• Paul Éluard
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Maxim Gorky
• Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), American author and creator of the "hard boiled" detective novel (notably, Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon), contracted tuberculosis during World War I.
• Saima Harmaja
• Robert A. Heinlein
• Miguel Hernandez
• Washington Irving
• Panait Istrati
• Helen Hunt Jackson
• Alfred Jarry
• Samuel Johnson
• Franz Kafka (1883-1924), German-language novelist best known for his novel The Metamorphosis, died from tuberculosis.
• Uuno Kailas
• John Keats (1795-1821), English Romantic poet; he and some of his family were taken by tuberculosis.
• Dragotin Kette
• Charles Kingsley
• Vincas Kudirka
• Sidney Lanier
• D. H. Lawrence
• Betty MacDonald
• Jari Mäenpää
• Katherine Mansfield
• William Somerset Maugham
• Guy de Maupassant
• Molière
• Josip Murn Aleksandrov
• Eugene O'Neill
• George Orwell (1903-1950), British author of 1984, Animal Farm and Homage to Catalonia, suffered bouts of tuberculosis from the early 1930s until his death from the illness in 1950.
• Walker Percy
• Andrei Platonov
• Alexander Pope
• Eleanor Anne Porden
• Llewelyn Powys
• Winthrop Mackworth Praed
• John Reed
• Edmond Rostand
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• John Ruskin
• Albert Samain
• Friedrich Schiller
• Sir Walter Scott
• Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), Japanese poet famous for revitalizing the haiku, died after a long struggle with tuberculosis.
• Emily Shore, diarist
• Juliusz Słowacki
• Hristo Smirnenski
• Tobias Smollett
• Laurence Sterne
• Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Neo-romantic Scottish essayist, novelist and poet, is thought to have suffered from tuberculosis during much of his life. He spent the winter of 1887–1888 recuperating from a presumed bout of tuberculosis at Dr. E.L. Trudeau's Adirondack Cottage Sanatarium in Saranac Lake, New York.
• Alan Sillitoe
• Dylan Thomas
• Francis Thompson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Voltaire
• Lesya Ukrainka
• Jessamyn West, American author, contracted TB in 1932 and recovered.
• Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American author, died of tuberculosis of the brain. His 1929 novel, Look Homeward, Angel, makes several references to the problem of consumption, though Wolfe's condition appeared rather suddenly in 1937.
• Jiří Wolker

Artists

• Frédéric Bartholdi
• Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-1884), talented Russian-born, French-educated woman painter and diarist, died from tuberculosis at the age of 26.
• Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), English illustrator and author; it is generally accepted that he died from tuberculosis.
• Harry Clarke
• Paul Gauguin (died of syphilis)
• Boris Kustodiev
• Amedeo Modigliani
• Andrei Ryabushkin
• Elizabeth Siddal ?
• Virginia Frances Sterret^[1]
• Amadeo de Souza Cardoso

Composers

• Luigi Boccherini, Italian cellist and composer, died in 1805 of pulmonary tuberculosis.
• Alfredo Catalani
• Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) died of consumption at age 39. Historical records indicate episodes of hemoptysis during performances.
• Sandrine Erdely-Sayo pianist/composer
• Stephen Foster
• Hermann Goetz
• Louis Joseph Ferdinand Herold
• Joseph Martin Kraus
• Niccolò Paganini
• Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736) died of tuberculosis at 26.
• Henry Purcell
• Johann Schein

Religious figures

• David Brainerd (1718-1747) left a diary that reflects his reliance upon God's faithfulness amidst his battle with consumption. The diary was historically very influential, particularly to the modern Christian missionary movement.^[2][3]
• John Calvin
• Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, the Roman Catholic nun and mystic from Poland, the patron saint of mercy, and the Apostle of the Divine Mercy, suffered greatly from tuberculosis and succumbed to it on October 5, 1938. ^[4]
• Cardinal Richelieu of France died from tuberculosis in 1642.
• Saint Thérèse de Lisieux (1873-1897), died of tuberculosis.
• Saint Bernadette Soubirous'

Leaders and politicians

• Simón Bolívar, considered the liberator of several South American countries, died in 1830 of TB.
• Charles IX of France
• John C. Calhoun
• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French political thinker
• Edward VI of England, died at age 15; cause of death is believed to have been either pulmonary tuberculosis, arsenic poisoning, or congenital syphilis.
• Ulysses S. Grant (died of throat cancer)
• Andrew Jackson
• Muhammed Ali Jinnah
• Sir Wilfrid Laurier
• Louis XIII of France
• Louis XVII of France
• Napoleon II of France
• Manuel L. Quezon
• John Aaron Rawlins
• Dmitri Pavlovitch Romanov
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Haym Salomon, a major financier of the American side during the American Revolutionary War
• Okita Soji (1844-1868), a young and famous captain of the Shinsengumi, died from tuberculosis. He was rumored to have discovered his disease when he coughed blood and fainted during the Ikedaya Affair.
• Alexander Stephens
• Sudirman, Commander of Indonesia's armed forces during its National Revolution
• John Young
• Pedro I of Brazil (Pedro IV of Portugal)

Others

• Niels Abel, mathematician
• Renée Adorée
• Beulah Annan
• Samuel Arnold
• Frédéric Bastiat
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Sarah Bernhardt
• Louis Braille
• James Burke
• Rico Carty, baseball player
• Anders Celsius
• Cheng Man-ch'ing Tai Chi Chuan master
• Charlie Christian
• William Kingdon Clifford, mathematician and philosopher
• Ferdinand Eisenstein, mathematician
• Arline Greenbaum Feynman, the first wife of physicist Richard Feynman, died from tuberculosis while her husband was working on the Manhattan Project.
• W. C. Fields
• Augustin-Jean Fresnel
• Brenda Fricker §
• Abel Gance
• Mark Brown Goblin (CEO of Guyanese Motors) §
• Jay Gould
• Emmett Hardy
• Alex Hill, jazz pianist
• Doc Holliday, famous gambler and gunslinger, suffered from tuberculosis until his death in 1887.
• John Ives
• Archie Jackson, Australian cricketer
• Tom Jones, the Welsh singing legend, spent about a year recovering from TB in his parents basement around the age of 12.
• Immanuel Kant
• Freddie Keppard
• Dan Kolov, Bulgarian wrestler
• René Laënnec French physician; inventor of the stethoscope
• Vivien Leigh (1913-1967), British actress of stage and screen, died from complications of tuberculosis.
• Edward Baker Lincoln son of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Ann Todd Lincoln
• Thomas "Tad" Daniel Lincoln (1853-1871), youngest child of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, died of TB in Chicago, Illinois, at age 18.
• Christy Mathewson (1880-1925), major league baseball pitcher; developed tuberculosis as a consequence of being accidentally gassed during a training exercise while serving in the U.S. Army Chemical Service during World War I.
• Dmitri Mendeleev ?
• James "Bubber" Miley jazz trumpeter
• Tim Moore (George "Kingfish" Stevens of Amos 'n Andy)
• Barry Morse ?
• N!xau
• Anne Neville (queen consort of Richard III) (probably)
• Florence Nightingale
• Mabel Normand
• Joey Only, Vancouver folk singer
• Red Schoendienst, baseball player and manager
• Okita Soji (1844-1868), samurai
• Jane Pierce, United States first lady
• Etti Plesch ?
• Joseph Mary Plunkett
• Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe (wife of Edgar Allan Poe)
• Herman Potočnik
• Gavrilo Princip
• Gustav Roch mathematician
• Jimmie Rodgers (1897 - 1933), country music singer, sang about the woes of tuberculosis in the song T.B. Blues (co-written with Raymond E. Hall) and ultimately died of the disease days after a New York City recording session.
• Bernhard Riemann, mathematician
• Erwin Schrödinger
• Baruch Spinoza
• Shanawdithit, believed to have been the last surviving member of the Beothuk people of Newfoundland, died from tuberculosis in 1829.
• Takasugi Shinsaku (1839-1867), samurai
• Edward Livingston Trudeau, an American physician who established the Adirondack Cottage Sanitorium for treatment of tuberculosis.
• Tulasa Thapa, a kidnapped Nepali girl, died of tuberculosis in 1995.
• Adrianus Turnebus
• Georges Vezina
• Félix Vicq-d'Azyr, French anatomist
• Lev Vygotsky
• Rube Waddell
• William Winchester (son of Oliver Winchester, husband of Sarah Winchester)
• Link Wray ?
• Eugene Wigner ?
• Ho Chi Minh

§ still living

? died of something unrelated to tuberculosis

See also

• Lists of people by cause of death.

References

• Rothman, Sheila M. (1994). Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History. ISBN 0-8018-5186-6