Spes phthisica

From a letter by Dermot Kennedy in the 12 May 2007 Economist:

[...] Your article on the unexpected improvement to patients' emotional health after they were injected with a bacterium recalls a similar effect that has been long identified in people suffering from tuberculosis ("Bad is good," April 7th). Known as Spes phthisica, or the euphoria of the consumptive, this partly explains the disease's impact on a long line of aesthetes, including George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, and Amedeo Modigliani [...]