Sense and Sensibility's Marianne Dashwood develops a fever after a stroll through wet grass and Pride and Prejudice's Jane Bennet gets ill after going riding in a downpour.
Professor Michael Warboys said the scenes reflected medical understanding in
the 19th-century in which a person's constitution was believed to be linked to a
variety of factors including the weather.
He said women were considered to be of a weaker constitution and thus more susceptible to environmentally "exciting causes" of disease such as extremes of weather, damp, shock and bad air. "The exciting cause in Pride and Prejudice was Jane going out in the rain," he added.
Vivienne Parry, the science broadcaster also speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival event, said: "We may laugh at Jane Austen and her heroine's susceptibility to damp, but the truth is we still cling to the idea that going out with wet hair or not wearing shoes will ensure we catch our death of cold."
Read all: Telegraph.co.uk
He said women were considered to be of a weaker constitution and thus more susceptible to environmentally "exciting causes" of disease such as extremes of weather, damp, shock and bad air. "The exciting cause in Pride and Prejudice was Jane going out in the rain," he added.
Vivienne Parry, the science broadcaster also speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival event, said: "We may laugh at Jane Austen and her heroine's susceptibility to damp, but the truth is we still cling to the idea that going out with wet hair or not wearing shoes will ensure we catch our death of cold."
Read all: Telegraph.co.uk
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