Winter in Davos

Abstract When John Addington Symonds decided to try overwintering in Davos to cure his tuberculosis, such behaviour was regarded as lunacy by the British medical establishment. This chapter explores the medical debates around high-altitude cures; Symonds’ role in shifting medical and social opinions; his active collaboration with Dr Thomas Clifford Allbutt’s research on tuberculosis; and the establishment of the English colony in Davos. Symonds is a figure of many seeming contradictions: an invalid and aesthete who championed tobogganing as an international sport and a devoted family man who nonetheless took many male lovers during his time in Davos. His Davos essays, and his introspective letters, which revolve constantly around his state of mental and bodily health, offer extraordinary insight into the life of a nineteenth-century invalid and sexual radical. Pushing against the boundaries set by his health he, like many of the invalids examined in this book, wrote constantly, aiming to achieve a justification of life through literary works.