Later Years
Alcott, who continued to write until her death, suffered chronic health problems in her later years, including vertigo. She and her earliest biographers attributed her illness and death to mercury poisoning. During her American Civil War service, Alcott contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury. Recent analysis of Alcott's illness, however, suggests that her chronic health problems may have been associated with an autoimmune disease, not acute mercury exposure. Moreover, a late portrait of Alcott shows rashes on her cheeks, which is a characteristic of lupus.
Alcott died at age 55 of a stroke in Boston, on March 6, 1888, two days after her father's death. Her last words were "Is it not meningitis?"
Read more about this topic: Louisa May Alcott
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“The great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept up within its flame so great a part of the civilized world, has affected us very profoundly.... With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst we are not interested to search for or explore.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“To be honest, I knew that there was no difference between dying at their years old and dying at seventy because, naturally, in both cases, other men and women will live on, for thousands of years at that.... It was still I who was dying, whether it was today or twenty years from now.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)