John Keats, the Romantic poet, suffered an agonising death after he was misdiagnosed by a bungling doctor, a new biography reveals.

Dr James Clark delayed treating Keats for tuberculosis for almost a month because he wrongly thought the poet was suffering from stress and a routine stomach ailment.

When he eventually confirmed a diagnosis of consumption, as TB was then called, Clark compounded his error by regularly drawing blood from his patient and placing him on starvation rations.

The treatment turned Keats, then aged just 25, into a physical and mental wreck who was too weak to fight off the disease. Clark went on to become Queen Victoria’s personal physician.

The claims are made in a book about Joseph Severn, an artist who befriended Keats and nursed him in the months leading up to his death in Rome in 1821.

Sue Brown, the author of the biography, said: “Dr Clark’s preferred method of treatment made Keats’s last weeks much more painful than they needed to be.”

At one point the poet became so desperate that he begged to be given laudanum, which contained opium and morphine, so that he could end his life.

Keats, whose works include Bright Star, Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn, contracted TB in 1820.

Having trained as a medical student, he suspected that he had the disease. TB had already claimed the poet’s mother and brother.

Yet he initially agreed to be guided by Clark, who recommended a regime of fresh air and exercise.

Keats’s illness is believed to be the main reason why he did not consummate his relationship with Fanny Brawne, a neighbour with whom he had fallen in love.

Brawne wrote to Keats in Italy but he refused to read her letters as he lay on his deathbed for fear it would compound his unhappiness.

Their love is the subject of a new film called Bright Star, directed by Jane Campion and starring Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish.

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