By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 03/05/2012 04:09 Pm Est on LiveScience
Plucky, ailing Tiny Tim is one of the most enduring characters to come out of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella "A Christmas Carol." But Dickens never explains why Tiny Tim wears leg braces and uses a crutch, nor does he make clear what will kill the young boy if the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge doesn't change his ways.
Now, a medical doctor thinks he has the answer. According to Russell Chesney, a physician at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, Tiny Tim suffered from a combination of rickets and tuberculosis.
Chesney made his diagnosis based on Tim's deformities described in the text, along with the story's insinuation that the boy's disease would be curable if his father had more money. Rickets is a bone disorder caused by a deficiency in vitamin D,...
Published: 03/05/2012 04:09 Pm Est on LiveScience
Plucky, ailing Tiny Tim is one of the most enduring characters to come out of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella "A Christmas Carol." But Dickens never explains why Tiny Tim wears leg braces and uses a crutch, nor does he make clear what will kill the young boy if the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge doesn't change his ways.
Now, a medical doctor thinks he has the answer. According to Russell Chesney, a physician at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, Tiny Tim suffered from a combination of rickets and tuberculosis.
Chesney made his diagnosis based on Tim's deformities described in the text, along with the story's insinuation that the boy's disease would be curable if his father had more money. Rickets is a bone disorder caused by a deficiency in vitamin D,...
- 3/6/2012
- by David Freeman
- Huffington Post
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