List of tuberculosis cases

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
• Vissarion Belinsky, Russian literary critic
• Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), fiction writer remembered for his book Looking Backward, died from tuberculosis.
• Sukanta Bhattacharya, Bengali poet
• Jonas Biliūnas
• Rachel Bluwstein
• 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 two 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.
• Clarissa Brooks, poet, died of tuberculosis in 1927.
• 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. He died of leukemia.
• Robert Burns
• Albert Camus, French writer, playwright, activist, and absurdist 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.
• Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC), Roman poet
• Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician; died from tuberculosis.
• Tristan Corbière
• Stephen Crane
• Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)
• René Daumal
• Nikolay Dobrolyubov
• Laura Don (1852-1886), actress-manager, playwright and artist
• Paul Laurence Dunbar
• Paul Éluard
• Friedrich Robert Faehlmann
• 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, Finnish poet and writer
• Jaroslav Hašek
• Robert A. Heinlein, American author
• 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 Trial, died from tuberculosis.
• Uuno Kailas, Finnish composer
• Andreas Karkavitsas, Greek writer
• John Keats (1795–1821), English Romantic poet; he and his brother Tom were taken by tuberculosis
• Dragotin Kette
• Charles Kingsley
• Kostas Krystallis, Greek poet
• Vincas Kudirka (1858–1899), Lithuanian poet and physician; died from tuberculosis
• Jules Laforgue (1860–1887), French-Uruguayan poet.
• Sidney Lanier
• D. H. Lawrence
• Betty MacDonald
• Jari Mäenpää, Finnish musician
• Katherine Mansfield
• William Somerset Maugham
• Guy de Maupassant
• Sara Haardt Mencken
• Molière
• Josip Murn Aleksandrov
• Novalis, German author and philosopher
• Eugene O'Neill
• George Orwell (1903–1950), British author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and Homage to Catalonia, first suffered TB in the early 30s and died from it in 1950, at the age of 46. Nineteen Eighty-Four was written during his final illness.
• Walker Percy
• Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822), Estonian poet, the founder of modern Estonian poetry; died from tuberculosis, lived only to age 21.
• Andrei Platonov
• Alexander Pope
• Eleanor Anne Porden
• Katherine Anne Porter
• Llewelyn Powys
• Winthrop Mackworth Praed
• Sholem Rabinovich
• Branko Radičević
• Michael Raffetto ?
• John Reed
• Edmond Rostand
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• John Ruskin
• Albert Samain
• Kaarlo Sarkia (1902–1945), Finnish poet
• 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 Sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York.
• Alan Sillitoe
• Edith Södergran (1892–1923) Finnish poet
• Ishikawa Takuboku
• Anton Hansen Tammsaare (1878–1940), Estonian writer; suffered from tuberculosis after 1911.
• Dylan Thomas
• Francis Thompson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Voltaire
• Lesya Ukrainka
• Chick Webb
• 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 and actors

• Ioannis Altamouras (1852–1878), Greek painter
• Frédéric Bartholdi (1834–1904), French sculptor, author of the Statue of Liberty
• Marie Bashkirtseff (1858–1884), talented Russian-born, French-educated painter and diarist, died from tuberculosis at the age of 26.
• Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898), English illustrator and author; a convert to Catholicism, on his deathbed he wrote a note pleading that all his "immoral drawings" should be destroyed.
• Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (1887–1918), Portuguese modernist painter (flu, not tuberculosis)
• Harry Clarke (1889–1931), Irish stained glass artist and book illustrator.
• Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), French Romantic painter
• Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), famous French painter, actually died of syphilis
• Boris Kustodiev (1878–1927), Russian painter and stage designer
• Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), Italian modernist painter
• Tim Moore (1887-1958), American actor of stage, screen and television
• Robert Natus (1890–1950), Estonian architect; suffered from tuberculosos after 1948.
• José Pancetti (1902–1958), Brazilian modernist painter
• William Ranney (1813–1857), 19th-century American painter.
• Slava Raškaj (1877–1906), Croatian painter
• Andrei Ryabushkin (1861–1904), Russian painter
• Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862), English artists' model, poet and artist
• Peter Purves Smith (1912–1949), Australian modernist artist, died during a lung operation.
• Virginia Frances Sterret (1900–1931), American artist and illustrator

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 (see the discussion for details). 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
• Jimmy Palao (1879–1925), jazz musician, died of tuberculosis at age 45.
• Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), died of tuberculosis at age 26.
• Henry Purcell
• Johann Schein
• Igor Stravinsky
• Carl Maria von Weber

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.
• John Calvin, leader of the Protestant Reformation
• Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, the Roman Catholic Religious Sister and mystic from Poland, the proponent of devotion to the Divine Mercy, suffered greatly from tuberculosis and succumbed to it on 5 October 1938.
• Cardinal Richelieu of France, died from tuberculosis in 1642.
• Saint Thérèse de Lisieux (1873–1897), died of tuberculosis.
• Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the visionary of Lourdes.
• Saint Gemma Galgani, suffered from 'tuberculosis of the spine with aggravated curvature.'
• Richard Wurmbrand, Protestant minister.
• Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810), Hasidic rabbi and religious teacher.

Leaders and politicians

• Elizabeth of Austria (1436-1505), a study of her bones indicated that she had probably tuberculosis at a young age.
• Nelson Mandela, South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and philanthropist. He got tbc exacerbated by the dank conditions in his cell.
• Peshwa Madhavrao I
• Simón Bolívar, the liberator of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, died in 1830 of TB.
• Charles IX of France
• John C. Calhoun
• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), French political philosopher
• James Monroe
• Andrew Jackson
• Muhammed Ali Jinnah
• Andres Larka (1878–1942), Estonian military commander and politician; suffered from tuberculosis after 1924.
• Sir Wilfrid Laurier
• Henry VII of England
• Louis XIII of France
• Louis XVII of France
• Andreas Vokos Miaoulis, Greek admiral and politician
• Napoleon II of France
• Manuel L. Quezon
• John Aaron Rawlins
• Chandler Abram Hatch
• 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)
• Henry B Bolster
• Desmond Tutu had TB as a child.
• Charles Hamilton Houston, NAACP lawyer known as "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow"

Others

• Niels Abel, mathematician
• Renée Adorée
• Malcolm Allison, footballer and manager
• Princess Amelia, at age 27; youngest child of King George III.
• Anandi Gopal Joshi, first Indian woman to obtain a degree in Western medicine.
• Beulah Annan
• Samuel Arnold
• Georgiana Drew Barrymore, actress, succumbed aged 36
• Frédéric Bastiat
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Sarah Bernhardt
• Jimmy Blanton, jazz bassist
• Louis Braille
• James Burke
• Rico Carty, baseball player
• Shaikh Raheela Begum
• Anders Celsius
• Cheng Man-ch'ing T'ai chi ch'uan master
• Charlie Christian, jazz guitarist; pioneer of the electric guitar
• William Kingdon Clifford, mathematician and philosopher
• Gotthold 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
• George Formby, Sr., Music hall comedian and singer (d.1921)
• Augustin-Jean Fresnel
• Brenda Fricker §
• Andrés Gómez
• Jay Gould, American railroad magnate and financier of the Gilded Age (1880's).
• Emmett Hardy
• Alex Hill, jazz pianist
• John Henry "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.
• Adrian Joss
• George Katona, founder of behavioural macro-economics.
• Immanuel Kant
• Freddie Keppard
• Dan Kolov, Bulgarian wrestler
• René Laennec 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
• Annie Lewis (c. 1869-1896), Musical comedy actress.
• Thomas "Tad" Daniel Lincoln (1853–1871), youngest child of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, died of TB in Chicago, Illinois, at age 18.
• John Lynch (c.1832 - 1866), Irish nationalist
• Asif Maharramov, national hero of Azerbaijan
• 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.
• Leander H. McNelly
• Dmitri Mendeleev creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements.
• Friedrich Miescher Swiss biochemist, noted for discovery of nucleic acids in cell nucleus (1844–1895)
• James "Bubber" Miley jazz trumpeter
• Ismail Mohammed
• Joseph Mohr
• Tim Moore (George "Kingfish" Stevens of Amos 'n Andy)
• Barry Morse ?
• N!xau
• Anne Neville (queen consort of Richard III) (unproven)
• Florence Nightingale
• Arthur Nixon, President Nixon's brother
• Harold Nixon, President Nixon's brother
• 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
• George Lohmann, English cricketer
• Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematician
• 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
• Anna Sissak-Bardizbanian, reporter
• Ringo Starr §, musician/former drummer of The Beatles, survived having tuberculosis at age 11
• 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.
• Prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis (1843–1879), former aide-de-camp of King Ludwig II
• 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
• Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter.
• Edward VI (1537–1553), died of tuberculosis at age 15 during his short reign as King of England.
• Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) §, British singer-songwriter
• Christiaan Van Vuuren

§ still living

? died of something unrelated to tuberculosis

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