Gramsci’s chronic illness shaped his life and the conditions under which he wrote.
Evidence
Antonio’s health was an added problem. He had a malformation of the spine, which the doctors attempted to cure by having him suspended for long periods from a beam on the ceiling, and when he grew up he became hunch-backed and was barely five feet tall. He also suffered from internal disorders which brought him close to death as a small child, and which were to recur throughout his adult life, accompanied by severe nervous complications, and to culminate in his death at the age of 46. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 38