Brontës, BCGs and medical misinformation

We're bloody lucky. Let's not squander it

Last weekend, I had a nourishing trip up north with some old friends and, being writerly women in our 40s, we visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire.

It’s the former home of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë - where they wrote Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. But, as someone who writes about health and wellness, one thing really struck me about their story.

Their mother died of what is now thought to have been uterine or ovarian cancer when her youngest was just a baby. Their father, determined to educate his five daughters just as his son (unusual in those days), sent the eldest two off to boarding school. There, they both contracted tuberculosis and died a few weeks later at home. Maria was 11 and Elizabeth, 10, died a month after her sister on 15 June 1825 - which I’ve just realised is 200 years ago this Sunday.

After that, their dad decided to homeschool his other children to protect them. It worked for a while, but Anne died aged 29, an…