Seeing medicine through opera glasses

Roger Burford Mason

Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996; 154: 921-923

Roger Burford Mason is a freelance writer living in Toronto.

Abstract

Few opera buffs stop to consider how the illnesses suffered by opera's great heros and heroines mirrored the medical treatments and public attitudes of their time. A Toronto physician and his wife, an English professor and literary critic, have written a book exploring how opera presents illnesses such as tuberculosis and syphilis.

| CMAJ March 15, 1996 (vol 154, no 6) |