 In the 1915 novel "Anne of the Island", the third in the Anne of Green Gables series, Ruby Gillis, one of Anne's childhood friends, dies of "the galloping consumption".Little Eva's romanticised death of consumption occurs over several chapters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin".The disease is not limited to human characters, but can help to achieve grim social realism in a novel.