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Orwell's writings probably influenced by TB, infertility

Indo-Asian News Service

New York, Oct 25 (IANS) George Orwell, whose works like "Animal Farm" and "1984" dwelt on malaises afflicting modern society, may have been influenced by his own physical ailments, says a scientific study. 

The new study, by John Ross of the Boston-based Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Centre, checked Orwell's medical records against passages from the master's works. The research is to be published in the Dec 1 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The India-born author was a sickly child, suffering multiple bouts of bronchitis and other respiratory ailments. As a young man, he had several episodes of bacterial pneumonia, and also contracted dengue fever during his time in Burma.

Perhaps due to his childhood respiratory illnesses, Orwell developed bronchiectasis, a condition characterised by perpetually dilated bronchi and fits of coughing.

In 1938, Orwell went to a sanatorium because he was coughing up blood, and was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis. 

He could have been infected in his childhood in India, as a police officer in Myanmar, as a soldier in Spain, or "during...years of tramping, poverty, and vagabondage" in France and England, Ross notes in his paper.

His treatment consisted of simple bed rest and good nutrition -- both of which improved his health enough for him to be discharged several months later.

Eight years later, depressed by his wife's death, Orwell moved to a windy and damp Scottish island. His health worsened significantly just as he was working on the first draft of "1984".

Fever, weight loss and night sweats sent him to the hospital, where he underwent "collapse therapy", a treatment designed to close the dangerous cavities that form in the chests of tuberculosis patients.

Orwell described his experience with collapse therapy in detail, and the treatment "may have influenced the depiction of the tortures of Winston Smith in the Ministry of Love" in 1984, according to Ross.

Possibly drawing on his first-hand knowledge of the effects of tuberculosis, Orwell wrote: "But the truly frightening thing was the emaciation of his body. The barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a skeleton: the legs had shrunk so that the knees were thicker than the thighs...the curvature of the spine was astonishing."

Orwell's poor health and apparent infertility -- as indicated by his own musings in his letters as well as the medical evidence linking some respiratory ailments to infertility -- probably contributed to the despondency in his writing.

"Orwell himself told his friends that '1984' would have been less gloomy had he not been so ill," Ross was quoted as saying in a release from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), the publisher of the journal.

Orwell died in 1950, ending a life plagued by sickness. That sickness, though, "made him a better and more empathetic writer, in that his sense of human suffering made his writing more universal", Ross argues.