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The Health Biographies Of Alexander Leeper, Robert Louis Stevenson, And Fanny Stevenson © 2001 By M.A.Banfield Incorporating The Bird Flu ( Avian Influenza ) Webpage © 24-10-05  The Health Biographies of Alexander Leeper, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Fanny Stevenson  The Bird Flu; learning from the nineteenth century plagues

The Health Biographies of Alexander Leeper, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Fanny Stevenson  There are other biographies which present the idea that the health problems of Leeper, Louis , and his wife Fanny were due to depression, stress, or hypochondria, but this web page examines how their physique, their personal and food hygiene, their housing and sanitation, and the epidemic contagious illnesses and the industrial pollution of the nineteenth century influenced their health.

Alexander Leeper Alexander Leeper was born in Ireland, where he contracted tuberculosis and had to travel to Australia in search of a warmer climate which was more suitable to his health. During his lifetime he achieved a first in Classical Moderations at Oxford University and became a leading educator, librarian and churchman in Melbourne. He developed tuberculosis because it was a common and contagious illness that occurred in epidemics in the industrial cities of the nineteenth century, and it probably affected his right lung because he had sideways curvature of the spine to the right which would have congested the lung on that side, making it more vulnerable. He had a lot of problems with his ailment because most people did, because there was no cure at that time, so it was chronic and usually featured severe relapses and resulted in early death. However Leeper read many medical books and experimented with many remedies including the Alexander Technique which he recommended for school students and military recruits. The Alexander Technique was developed by Frederick Matthias Alexander of Tasmania and was a method of improving posture to remove pressure from the lungs and prevent or relieve respiratory diseases. Leeper met Frederick Alexander, championed his method, and lived to the age of 86, when most men under conventional medical treatment died in their 30's. He is mentioned in this set of biographies because his personality and achievements were the exact opposite of the medical stereotype of hypochondriacs, where poor character, cowardice, laziness, and ignorance of literature and history were described as prominent characteristic features.

Robert Louis Stevenson "Robert Louis Stevenson" (Louis) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he qualified in law at Edinburgh University and went on to become one of the most famous Scottish writers with his books such as Treasure Island, and Kidnapped. He developed chronic tuberculosis of the lungs but many other biographers have doubted this because there were no blood tests or X-rays available in the nineteenth century and various doctors of the time provided uncertain and contradictory diagnoses, where they often referred to his ailments as mysterious. He also had many relapses but always seemed to recover so his ailments have been interpreted as being trivial. Further doubt is expressed by the idea that he died of a stroke rather than tuberculosis and it has been suggested that this was brought on by stress. However Louis family were lighthouse builders which required them to quarry, cut, and grind thousands of tons of granite blocks for the lighthouse towers. This was a dusty occupation in which many workers developed silicosis of the lungs which was often followed by tuberculosis and early death. Thomas Stevenson had the symptoms of tuberculosis which was probably contracted in this way, and then the tuberculosis germs were exhaled in the breath which is how many close family members contracted the ailment, and this may have been how his son Louis first contracted the illness as a teenager. Louis condition was aggravated by a 6000 mile journey by ship and train to meet his future wife Fanny, during which he was exposed to cold, cramped, and unsanitary train cabins which were crowded with foreigners who carried all sorts of exotic infections, including tuberculosis. Several doctors diagnosed severe tuberculosis including some who were world authorities on the subject, and he was advised to leave his misty and smoggy and polluted home in Edinburgh and seek the pure mountain air, or the fresh sea air of the Swiss Alps, the south of France, or the tropical Pacific islands. In his journeys to find a climate more suitable to his health he stayed in many countries where epidemics were rife, and were killing millions of people, and he contracted some of those illnesses which included pneumonia, bronchitis, malaria, meningitis, and probably also typhus, typhoid, cholera, and brucellosis. He eventually settled in the island paradise of Samoa, but died of a stroke at the age of 44 because of the combined effect of his thin and stooped physique and his sedentary occupation as a writer, and because of chain smoking, and drinking alcohol and coffee to excess, and spending too much of his life consuming a high cholesterol diet, and because of the accumulated effect of many bouts of meningitis on the arteries of his brain.

Fanny Stevenson Fanny Stevenson was born in Indiana in the U.S.A. and met Louis while they were both staying in Europe. Several years later Fanny sent Louis an urgent telegram asking him to come and help her because she was suffering from brain fever, which was the nineteenth century medical word for meningitis, probably affecting her as a complication of malaria or brucellosis. The couple married soon after and travelled together in search of a climate suitable for Louis health, and on the way she had to nurse him through his many fevers which were caused by a variety of infectious illnesses, and after an incubation period of several days or weeks she would come down with the illness herself. This is one reason why other biographers have portrayed her as a sympathy seeking hypochondriac who complained about trivial or imaginary ailments, where it has been said that whenever Louis became ill, she would predictably dash into the sick bed herself as if it was a jolly old game of musical chairs. However the nineteenth century feverish illnesses were highly contagious ailments which caused severe debility and killed millions. Fanny read many articles about health, including some in the British Medical Journal called The Lancet, in an attempt to prevent or treat the many illnesses that Louis suffered from, which is another reason why she has been described as a hypochondriac. However, she had to deal with doctors who gave contradictory diagnoses, and who were unable to give cures. She would also take the precaution of ensuring that visitors had clean handkerchiefs, and would prevent doctors from entering Louis sick room snorting and sneezing. These ideas were well ahead of the medical thinking at that time when a lot of doctors dismissed the idea that germs could cause disease because they thought it was silly. When Fanny's five year old son Hervey died of Scrofula, an infectious illness, Fanny became ill herself but this has been described as the psychosomatic illness of a grieving mother which set up a neurosis which was responsible for her future illnesses. The symptoms were probably those of Antwerp fever, which was a name given to several different epidemic illnesses such a tuberculosis, typhoid, and typhus, because doctors could not distinguish the difference at that time. Many of her subsequent illnesses were the same as those of Louis which were contracted after an incubation period for the particular infection. Fanny also had a severe illness in March 1893 which has been described as a spectacular breakdown and a mental white out which she suddenly snapped out of because of an obscure change of attitude that she supposedly had at that time. However she was probably suffering from typhoid, which was followed by meningitis when the infection spread to the lining of her brain, and this produces wild, argumentative, uncooperative, and violent outbursts with fever, fits and hallucinations. Such severe infectious illnesses usually ended suddenly in death or complete recovery. Typhoid germs collect in the gallbladder, and the puss later coagulates into gallstones, which can eventually block the gallducts and cause pain which is relieved by surgery. Fanny had gallbladder surgery a few years after her so called 'breakdown'.

The Health Biographies Of Alexander Leeper, Robert Louis Stevenson, And Fanny Stevenson © By M.A.Banfield Book details Full color hardback cover with 18 pages on Alexander Leeper, 90 pages on Robert Louis Stevenson, and 95 pages on Fanny Stevenson, and a 29 page index featuring more than 3000 entries

Ordering Details Costs A$34.90 within Australia, NZ$49.90 to New Zealand, U.S$24.90 to the United States, & U.K.£17.90 to the United Kingdom (cost per book includes postage). Orders to the books author: M.A.Banfield Ph. +61 (08) 82635735 *** Alternatively this book is available in many Australian Public Libraries. *** ISBN 0 9585390 3 0

Endorsements "The Minister of Youth Sports and Culture in Samoa loves the book. We presented him with his own copy and he devoured it." James S. Winegar, President of The Robert Louis Stevenson Museum, International Offices, Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A. "It has been a very, very interesting topic . . . I am glad I came across that little article about the book and got in touch with you to come in and tell us all about this. It has been fascinating . . . as you said you have gone into all of his other biographies . . . and put your book together like a jigsaw puzzle." Bruce Scotland, Scottish Radio Hour, 5EBI FM, Adelaide, South Australia 30-10-01

If you wish to link to this webpage you can do so by copying and pasting the following text onto your webpage and then linking the address using the edit menu. Also see The Health Biographies Of Alexander Leeper, Robert Louis Stevenson, And Fanny Stevenson http://users.chariot.net.au/~posture/stevensonbiowebpage.html

The Bird Flu Epidemic Webpage © 24-10-05 I have survived more than 100 different illnesses and injuries. My survival is partly due to my practice of acquiring relevant knowledge. My knowledge of epidemics relates to The Black Plague of London, The Florence Nightingale methods of treating infectious illness in the Crimean Military Hospitals, and The Flu Epidemic of 1918 which contributed to the ending of World War 1. I also became interested in the contrast between the health of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny Stevenson. Louis was reckless with his health. He was born in a city where the air was thick with smog and the drinking water was contaminated with sewerage and toxic chemicals, and he smoked and drank excessively, and visited exotic countries and wandered through squalid suburbs, and walked through leper colonies, and contracted many plagues. His wife Fanny tended to his illnesses and contracted them after an incubation period of 1 or 2 weeks, and read medical journals to treat those conditions more effectively for Louis, herself, and the members of her household in Samoa. Louis whole life was disrupted by illness until he died of a stroke at age 44. After his death Fanny returned to England where she seems to have had perfect health until she died in her 70's. The following comments relate to those matters which are indirectly, but importantly relevant to the Bird Flu. M.B. To understand the bird flu is to understand the life of Robert Louis Stevenson who survived the plagues of the nineteenth century where others died in their tens of millions. Robert Louis Stevenson lived in the nineteenth century, before microscopes could confirm a patients infection, and before x-rays could provide evidence of lung disease, and before immunisation or antibiotics were available, and when people had to survive by their power of observation and reason. He lived in Edinburgh and visited London where the fogs were black and yellow and blue from the soot which rose from every house, train, and factory chimney, and a man could not see his hand in front of his face, and the cobblestones of the road, and the walls of buildings were black, indicating the contaminated condition of the lungs of every citizen. He lived at a time when 50% of the population of industrial cities contracted pneumonia and most died from it, and when 97% of the population had evidence of tuberculosis antibodies in their blood, and when most of them contracted the ailment in their teens and died from relapses in their twenties. He lived when mice and rats, and bed bugs, and lice and tics , and mosquito bread in the windowless houses, and the piles of garbage, and the open sewer drains in the city streets, and the rivers which provided domestic drinking water, and when milk, vegetables and meat were transported by horse and cart and became contaminated with horse dung dust, and when vast numbers of children contracted summer diarrhea and other infections and died in their infancy. He lived at a time when plagues started in the poorer suburbs of Rome where food vendors lived in underground dugouts full of mice, rats, tics, and bugs, and the contaminated food was sold to the citizens of the wealthy suburbs, and was transported by horse and cart along the coast of the Mediterranean sea from town to town, spreading the plagues in its wake. He lived at a time when one person with a plague emptied their bowels and the contaminated feces found its way into a city drinking water and killed tens of thousands of its citizens. He lived when Typhoid Mary, a carrier of typhoid who showed no symptoms herself, worked as a cook for wealthy families who lived in mansions, and whenever she changed jobs, she transmitted typhoid to each new family. He lived at a time when trains had spittoons along the aisles and the majority of travelers contracted lung diseases from the dried dust of the tuberculous spit. Such trains stopped at remote hotels and restaurants where food was not fresh or refrigerated and 50% of the passengers contracted food poisoning. (One of Stevensons many infectious illnesses was probably brucellosis caused by contact with infected goats, or from drinking goat milk, or from inhaling goat dung dust which blew in the wind on a goat farm in the mountains of California). Robert Louis Stevenson lived at a time when pacific islanders held feasts where every native dipped his fingers into 50 bowls of food and soup. When one ship came into port and one man with small pox attended the banquet 90% of the population died of small pox because the condition was completely foreign to their immune systems and they had no defense against it. He lived at a time when one person contracted malaria, and then one at a time, each member of the family who came into direct contact with them, or who attended to his nursing needs and handled blood, vomit, and feces soiled bed sheets, contracted the ailment in a sequence which was determined by the incubation period of the bugs development, from contraction, to latency, to symptoms, to delirium, and then death or recovery. He lived when doctors were sceptical about the germ theory and transmitted plagues as they coughed and sneezed their way from patient to patient. To survive the bird flu, is to understand these things from the perspective of a full strategy of prevention, interrupting the spread, escpecially in its early stages, (so that their is time to develop immunisation and treatments programmes). town planning, quarantining and housing of patients from the public, and from other patients with other illnesses, and protection of the treatment providers. A consideration of only one factor, or to ignore any factor is doomed to failure. Those who learn from history will be best suited to avoid the mistakes of history and survive. More information on this matter can be gleaned from this web page about the health of Robert Louis Stevenson, and from the book. M.B. Additonal Notes on Epidemic Policy and History In the nineteenth century Crimean Military Hospitals Florence Nightingale reduced the death rate from 50% to 5% by cleaning bed sheets and floors. Prior to her policies, soldiers with bayonet wounds were put into beds which had been soiled by the sweat, urine, feces, vomit, blood, and pus of the previous patients who had died from infected wounds. When AIDS was first discovered a policy of secrecy was introduced to prevent public panic. In the meantime the epidemic spread rapidly and globally and is still out of control nowadays.

The Three Wise Monkeys, the laughing kookaburra, and The Bird Flu © I don't think that this is an original story, but I will tell it in my own words anyway. Three wise monkeys were sitting in a clearing in the middle of an African jungle when a rogue elephant came stampeding towards them. The first monkey pretended that nothing was happening in the hope that the elephant would ignore him and go away, and he was trampled to death. The elephant turned around and stampeded again and the second monkey panicked and froze on the spot, and he was trampled to death. The third wise monkey had observed that ignorance and fear didn't solve any problems so he decided to do something, anything at all, because anything would have to to be better than nothing, and he turned around, and luckily, saw a river not far away with a rope bridge across it. He headed off at a casual pace, hoping that the elephant would see that he was no threat, and he reached the bridge and decided to walk across it in the hope that the elephant couldn't swim, but he kept planning ahead and thought to himself "If that ruddy elephant jumps into the river and swims across, I will walk back and forth across that bridge until the silly pachyderm wears himself out and drowns". Unfortunately, that monkey hasn't been seen since, and as you know, ladies and gentlemen, not even the best laid plans work as they should all the time, but we have to do something or we will all be the hopeless victims of our fate, so last week, with that in mind, an Australian kookaburra who always laughed at everything,.and lived in a big chookhouse because he couldn't fly, decided, for reasons known only to himself, to learn a bit about Avian Influenza. He paddled a row boat through torrential storms and hurricanes across the seven seas, and traipsed his way through a jungle on his way to the Central African Bird Flu Conference, and found himself in that very same clearing surrounded by a hundred man-eating lions. They all attacked from every direction at once and as they got close enough for the kookaburra to smell their hungry breath, and then as their claws were at his belly, and their teeth were at his throat, he wondered what to do. Just then the earth began to tremble and shake, and he thought "Well then, that is typical; things always seem to get worse before they get better, and now I must be in the middle of a ruddy earthquake!!". At that same instant every one of those lions fled in fear as a thousand angry elephants came stampeding through the jungle, and there he was, just an ordinary kookaburra,.wondering "How much worse can things get before they get better?" He didn't know what to do next, but he knew that he had to do something so he watched carefully as the strongest and mightiest of the elephants was leading the rest toward him, It was the big rogue elephant, and as it came thundering closer and closer the kookaburra thought to himself "I'm not dead yet, but if I don't come up with a really good idea quick, I soon will be." Just then, he waw a monkey come out from behind a bush where he had been hiding from the 100 hungry lions, and as he rushed bye at break neck speed he yelled "Run for the bridge." M.B.

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View a brief summary of the Stevenson health controversies View a brief summary of the Leeper hypochondria controversy