What illness did Tiny Tim have?
What was wrong with Tiny Tim?
A paediatrician used clues from A Christmas Carol to diagnose Tiny Tim — and found he was curable.
In Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim is ill but the illness is never named, and it is somehow reversible. A paediatric neurologist read the original manuscript, watched eight film versions and studied children’s medical books from the 1830s and 1840s.
His best guess: a kidney condition called distal renal tubular acidosis, which treatments of the time (fish oils and alkaline tonics) could genuinely have helped. So when Scrooge pays for the best care, Tim really could get better. Every heart grows a size.
God bless us, every one — and the paediatrician too.