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Diseases, both real and fictional, play a significant role in fiction, with certain diseases like Huntington's disease in popular culture, Huntington's disease and Tuberculosis in human culture, tuberculosis appearing in many books and films. Pandemic plagues threatening all human life, such as ''The Andromeda Strain'', are among the many List of fictional diseases, fictional diseases described in literature and film.
Genuine plagues have formed the central elements of books from Giovanni Boccaccio's c. 1353 ''The Decameron'' onwards. Boccaccio tells the tales of ten people of Florence who escape from the Black Death in their city. The book inspired Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century ''Canterbury Tales'', which similarly tells the stories of people on pilgrimage in a time of plague. Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film ''The Seventh Seal'' ( sv, Det sjunde inseglet) is set in Denmark during the Black Death, and features a game of chess with Death (personification), Death personified as a monk-like figure.
Tuberculosis was a common disease in the 19th century, and it appeared in several major works of Russian literature. Fyodor Dostoevsky used the theme of the consumptive nihilist repeatedly, with Katerina Ivanovna in ''Crime and Punishment''; Kirillov in ''The Possessed (novel), The Possessed'', and both Ippolit and Marie in ''The Idiot.'' Turgenev did the same with Bazarov in ''Fathers and Sons (novel), Fathers and Sons''. In English literature of the Victorian era, major tuberculosis novels include Charles Dickens's 1848 ''Dombey and Son'', Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 ''North and South (Gaskell novel), North and South'', and Mary Augusta Ward, Mrs. Humphry Ward's 1900 ''Eleanor''.
Albert Camus's 1947 ''The Plague (novel), The Plague'', probably based on cholera in 19th-century France, was seen both as fable about the need for people to help each other in the meaningless world seen by existentialism, and as alluding to the German invasion of France, fresh in Camus's mind.
Huntington's disease appears Huntington's disease in popular culture#Books, in many novels, such as Ian McEwan's 2005 ''Saturday (novel), Saturday''. It was criticised as prejudiced in the medical journal ''The Lancet'' for its negative portrayal of the protagonist with the disease.
Diseases, especially if infectious disease, infectious, have long been popular themes and plot devices in fiction. Daniel Defoe's pioneering 1722 ''A Journal of the Plague Year'' is a fictional diary of a man's life during the plague year of 1665 in England. Mary Shelley's 1826 ''The Last Man (Mary Shelley novel), The Last Man'' created the genre of "post-apocalyptic pandemic thriller" with her story of a plague that is spreading across Europe towards her protagonists in Britain. Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 "The Masque of the Red Death" is a gothic fiction, gothic tale of a plague, perhaps symbolising the hubris of the wealthy, and their nemesis.
More recently, Michael Crichton's 1969 ''The Andromeda Strain'' is a science fiction Thriller (genre), thriller about a world-threatening microbe that a military satellite brings down to Earth and wipes out a town in Arizona. White-coated scientists do their best to contain the outbreak. The 1995 ''12 Monkeys'' is another post-apocalyptic thriller.
Real diseases
Genuine plagues have formed the central elements of books from Giovanni Boccaccio's c. 1353 ''The Decameron'' onwards. Boccaccio tells the tales of ten people of Florence who escape from the Black Death in their city. The book inspired Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century ''Canterbury Tales'', which similarly tells the stories of people on pilgrimage in a time of plague. Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film ''The Seventh Seal'' ( sv, Det sjunde inseglet) is set in Denmark during the Black Death, and features a game of chess with Death (personification), Death personified as a monk-like figure.
Tuberculosis was a common disease in the 19th century, and it appeared in several major works of Russian literature. Fyodor Dostoevsky used the theme of the consumptive nihilist repeatedly, with Katerina Ivanovna in ''Crime and Punishment''; Kirillov in ''The Possessed (novel), The Possessed'', and both Ippolit and Marie in ''The Idiot.'' Turgenev did the same with Bazarov in ''Fathers and Sons (novel), Fathers and Sons''. In English literature of the Victorian era, major tuberculosis novels include Charles Dickens's 1848 ''Dombey and Son'', Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 ''North and South (Gaskell novel), North and South'', and Mary Augusta Ward, Mrs. Humphry Ward's 1900 ''Eleanor''.
Albert Camus's 1947 ''The Plague (novel), The Plague'', probably based on cholera in 19th-century France, was seen both as fable about the need for people to help each other in the meaningless world seen by existentialism, and as alluding to the German invasion of France, fresh in Camus's mind.
Huntington's disease appears Huntington's disease in popular culture#Books, in many novels, such as Ian McEwan's 2005 ''Saturday (novel), Saturday''. It was criticised as prejudiced in the medical journal ''The Lancet'' for its negative portrayal of the protagonist with the disease.
Fictional diseases
Diseases, especially if infectious disease, infectious, have long been popular themes and plot devices in fiction. Daniel Defoe's pioneering 1722 ''A Journal of the Plague Year'' is a fictional diary of a man's life during the plague year of 1665 in England. Mary Shelley's 1826 ''The Last Man (Mary Shelley novel), The Last Man'' created the genre of "post-apocalyptic pandemic thriller" with her story of a plague that is spreading across Europe towards her protagonists in Britain. Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 "The Masque of the Red Death" is a gothic fiction, gothic tale of a plague, perhaps symbolising the hubris of the wealthy, and their nemesis.
More recently, Michael Crichton's 1969 ''The Andromeda Strain'' is a science fiction Thriller (genre), thriller about a world-threatening microbe that a military satellite brings down to Earth and wipes out a town in Arizona. White-coated scientists do their best to contain the outbreak. The 1995 ''12 Monkeys'' is another post-apocalyptic thriller.
See also
* Biology in fiction * Medical fiction * Parasites in fictionReferences
Further reading
* Tirard, Nestor (1886) ''Disease in Fiction. Its place in current literature''. * Rothfield, Lawrence (1992) ''Vital Signs Medical Realism in Nineteenth-Century Fiction''. * Krémer, René (2003) "Les malades imaginés: Diseases in fiction". ''Acta Cardiologica''. * Westfahl, Gary; Slusser, George (2002) ''No Cure for the Future: Disease and Medicine in Science Fiction and Fantasy''. * Christensen, Allen Conrad (2005) ''Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Contagion''. * VanderMeer, Jeff; Roberts, Mark (1915) ''The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases''.External links
* {{Biology in fiction Fiction about diseases and disorders, Biology and culture Fiction about medicine and health Dark fantasy