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Keats's tragedy was neither unrequited love nor bad treatment by the world. It was tuberculosis, which he caught while nursing his brother Tom. Given the medical practice of the day, it killed him. Nothing could be more harrowing than descriptions of Keats's final weeks in Rome. When he coughed up two cupfuls of blood one morning, the doctor felt obliged to bleed him two cups more "to relieve inflammation." Then he was put on a starvation diet of "one anchovy and a morsel of bread a day." As a medical student, Keats knew long before this that he was as good as dead anyway. He struggled to make his death easier for Joseph Severn, the kind but ineffectual painter who nursed him. Severn had never seen anyone die. Keats punned "a hundred times a day" and made jokes to divert him. "Severn," he gasped when the final moment came, "lift me up—I am dying." Then he added reassuringly, "Don't be afraid."