Sir, Jack Malvern (report, Mar 30) affords John Keats knowledge that his limited medical training could have provided. As Andrew Motion states in his biography of the poet, Keats could not have known that his illness was contagious because the tubercle bacillus was not definitively characterised until 1882 — 60 years after Keats died. The reasons for the poet removing himself from his beloved Fanny Brawne were a concoction of far greater complexity.
Peter Larner
Upminster, Essex