<div><p>Novelist Jane Austen may have died from tuberculosis rather than Addison's disease, a scholar said on Tuesday after studying the symptoms she described in her letters.</p><p>The Pride and Prejudice author, who died at the age of 41 in 1817, did not mention some of the most common symptoms associated with Addison's disease, in which adrenal glands fail to produce sufficient steroid hormones.</p><p>Katherine White from the Addison's Disease Self Helf Group said Austen did not complain of mental confusion, generalised pain and weight loss, symptoms usually associated with the rare hormonal disorder.</p><p>"In a letter written less than two months before her death, as she was recovering from a period of severe illness where she had been too weak to leave her bed, Jane Austen wrote to a close friend that 'My head was always clear, and I had scarcely any pain'," White said in a report published in Medical Humanities.</p><p>Austen was even lucid enough to dictate lines of comic verse to her sister Cassandra less than 48 hours before she died.</p><p>"While Austen was undoubtedly an exceptional intellect, this clarity of thought is not typical of advanced adrenal failure," White continued.</p><p>Symptoms that the celebrated author did mention in her letters included exhaustion, suffering bilious attacks and rheumatic pains. Austen also wrote that she suffered from skin discolouration.</p><p>White said Austen had most likely died of bovine tuberculosis, a common disease at the time and often contracted from drinking unpasteurised milk.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=64526970&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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