When Edith Wharton as a child succumbed to typhoid fever during her family’s stay in Germany, the illness befell her swiftly and seriously, and her recovery was somewhat serendipitous. As she recounts in A Backward Glance, the local Wildbad doctor’s knowledge and resources in treating her were quickly depleted, and it was only the intercession of a “celebrated” medical expert summoned, “for a day,” by “a princely patient” to this spa-like area that “saved” her (29).
Such stories have become only too familiar to many of us over the last two-plus years. The full effects of the current pandemic will take time to understand with any degree of certainty, but from a nearly seven decades–long retrospect, Wharton speaks with assurance in her autobiography of the long-term effects of her own illness on her education and intellectual development. She cites, among other disadvantages, her parents’ fears of overtaxing her weakened...
