Malingering Microbes and Winter Sports

Abstract ‘Malingering Microbes and Winter Sports’ examines the impact of Robert Koch’s 1882 discovery of the infectious nature of tuberculosis on Davos life; the excitement around his supposed discovery of a cure, ‘Koch’s lymph’, and the town’s pivot away from solely catering for the ill, with the development of cultural institutions and winter sports, all lead by the invalid community (John Addington Symonds pioneered the international sport of tobogganing, and Conan Doyle was instrumental in introducing skiing to a British public). The chapter teases out these various strands of resort life, exploring the close bonds between Symonds, fellow invalid Samuel Richards (an American painter), and the Davos doctor, Carl Ruedi; the disruptive arrival of Robert Ross (escaping sexual scandal in England); and the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, who spent time in Davos caring for his tubercular wife. Conan Doyle had investigated Koch’s work in Berlin, and his writings during his stay in Davos take a distinct medical, and frequently macabre, turn, particularly ‘The Parasite’, giving voice to many of the anxieties, and to the suppressed emotional turmoil, which lay beneath the polite surface exchanges of resort life.