Held on Wednesday, 17 September 2025 at 6:30pm

Venue: Apothecaries' Hall, Black Friar's Lane, London EC4V 6EJ

Presenting Consumption & Creativity (Keats Memorial Lecture)

To be given by Dr Noel Snell

Keats Memorial lecture

The talk will review changing attitudes to TB in the 18th/19thC, with the rise in belief that infection could stimulate creativity in artists, composers, writers, and poets; examples of creative subjects who suffered from TB include Keats, Shelley, Chopin, the Brontë sisters, Chekhov, Kafka, George Orwell, Aubrey Beardsley, and Modigliani. Some physicians considered that ‘toxins’ from the disease could affect the behaviour and creativity of TB patients; could there be any truth in the idea that infection could modify a patient’s behaviour? ). There is evidence in man that the parasite Toxoplasma gondii can cause increased risk-taking, and is associated with a higher likelihood of developing schizophrenia, which has been associated with creativity and artistic achievement. Mice infected with Mycobacterium vaccae (a relative of the bacillus causing TB) show increased levels of serotonin in the brain, a reduction in anxiety, and improved learning ability. Keats was a genius; but was this innate, or contributed to by his TB infection (or perhaps the drugs he may have taken for it)?

Dr Noel Snell qualified at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and trained in respiratory medicine before spending several years as a clinician scientist in the Medical Research Council’s Tuberculosis & Chest Diseases Unit. He then worked mainly in clinical research, whilst maintaining part-time clinical and academic appointments, before being appointed Director of Research at the British Lung Foundation (2013-15). He was an honorary physician at the Royal Brompton Hospital 1981-2017. He was a Welcome short-term History of Medicine Research Fellow in 1995, and was awarded the Society of Apothecaries’ History of Medicine Diploma in 2017. He gave the Osler lecture of the Society of Apothecaries in 2018. He has published over 140 papers, abstracts, and chapters in books. His particular interests are the history of respiratory medicine and tuberculosis, and the botanical origins of modern medicines.