A Theory on Jane Austen's Death

A British medical researcher believes she has answered the longstanding question of what killed Jane Austen — and it isn’t the contemporary wave of Austen-horror mashup books. The Guardian reported that Katherine White of the Addison’s Disease Self Help Group has written an article for the British Medical Journal’s Medical Humanities magazine in which she says that Austen probably died of tuberculosis caught from cattle.

In her article, Ms. White examined correspondence from Austen, who died in 1817 at age 41, as well as recollections from her family members, and concluded that she probably did not die of Addison’s disease or lymphoma, as medical researchers and biographers have speculated. “While lymphoma would be one possible cause of the exhaustion, recurrent fever, bilious attacks and rheumatic pains described by Austen,” Ms. White wrote in Medical Humanties, “disseminated tuberculosis affecting the joints and liver – probably of bovine origin – would offer a simpler explanation for her symptoms.”

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http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/a-theory-on-jane-austens-death/