Angina Pectoris and the Arnolds: Emotions and Heart Disease in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The Case of Thomas Arnold of Rugby On the evening of Saturday 11 June 1842, Thomas Arnold, the educational reformer and Headmaster of Rugby school, strolled in the institutional gardens with his head boy, William Charles Lake. 1 Thomas would subsequently dine with the Sixth Form boys; a customary act on the last day of term.His diary entry for that evening noted, ''The day after to-morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to see it''. 2 His words proved prescient.At 5 a.m. on Sunday, Thomas woke with agonizing pains across his chest.Three hours later he was dead, a victim of angina pectoris.The same disease had killed Thomas's father William Arnold, the Collector of Customs and Postmaster of the Isle of Wight.It would also kill Thomas's son, the poet Matthew Arnold.3 Each of these three generations of Arnold men diagnosed with angina pectoris died suddenly and unexpectedly: both Thomas and William were in their forties; Matthew died at sixty-five.The death of Thomas Arnold was unusually well-publicized in nineteenth-century Britain.His last hours and minutes were recorded by Peter Mere Latham (or ''Heart Latham'' as he became known) in his work on heart disease, and by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, a student of Thomas Arnold and later dean of Westminster.Stanley was commissioned by Mary Arnold to write her dead husband's biography.4 In Latham's account, Thomas is termed ''T.A.'' and discussed as one of three anonymous individuals who died of angina pectoris.Latham's work includes a detailed transcription of Thomas's last conversation with his attending physician, Dr Bucknill junior.

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