D. H. LAWRENCE died 75 years ago of tuberculosis, and even though he achieved the zenith of his fame — some might say notoriety — with the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, biographies of him are still written and his books are read and enjoyed. The latest biography, by John Worthen, is based on the premise that Lawrence has become a neglected genius.

Lawrence lived an eventful if short life. In the 1940s I knew well a contemporary of his at Nottingham University. She told me that he had always been a fairly popular member of the faculty, but his later success surprised those who knew him.

For those whose time is occupied more with medicine than with literature, Lawrence’s life is interesting in two aspects: his TB and the light that his writing and lifestyle throws on the Kinsey reports, a major study of sexual behaviour published in the 1940s and 1950s.

Lawrence suffered for five years with increasingly severe TB. He was taken ill in Mexico. TB was diagnosed after a persistent cough that initially appeared to be no more than a residual symptom but failed to improve. Then, as now, TB was more likely to be caught in the Third World where poverty is rife and living standards are low.

It is still one of the golden rules of medicine that if a cough is unusually persistent once the acute symptoms have subsided, it is important to have additional tests.

Lawrence’s doctors were pessimistic from the start. This was the pre-antibiotic, pre-antimicrobial age when doctors were limited in their effective treatment of TB to fresh air (but not direct sun), moderate exercise and plenty of fresh, simple, nourishing food.

Lawrence’s behaviour in the early stages of the disease illustrated the old medical maxim that TB doesn’t affect the sex drive until the patient begins to weaken. Initially, patients admitted to a sanatorium, spared the necessity of daily work, had time on their hands. Since many sanatoriums were mixed-sex, the possibility of an exciting new social life presented itself, and not all patients resisted the temptation.

When I started in medicine, one of the reasons why a partner was often reluctant to allow their spouse to go to a sanatorium was the fear that they would become too friendly with a gorgeous redhead. This was a common maxim of the time, although so far as I know it was an assumption with no scientific basis — except that many redheads are Celts, and TB was once common in Ireland and Scotland — that redheads were susceptible to TB.

Lawrence’s wife, Frieda von Richthofen, a cousin of the legendary “Red Baron” von Richthofen, the First World War fighter ace, had a voracious sexual appetite. She continued to have sex with Lawrence when he was first ill. However, by 1930, when Lawrence was dying, Angelino Ravagli, Frieda’s Italian lover, forbade it. There is a theory that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was written with such emotion because, as Lawrence became increasingly weakened by TB, he felt an increasing affinity with the crippled, cuckolded Sir Clifford in the book.

Lawrence’s TB and its effect on his sexual desires and ability, his wife’s great sexual demands and their approaches to extramarital intercourse are also a good introduction to the recently reprinted Kinsey work Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, part of his epic study published in 1953.

The new edition includes an excellent introduction by John Bancroft, who was an important figure in British medicine 35 years ago, before he moved to America. Kinsey stressed the difference in sexual behaviour between men and women. Over the past 50 years, since Kinsey’s book was published and the oral contraceptive Pill became established, this difference has diminished. It was possibly never as great as Kinsey supposed.

One of my early memories of general practice is of being rebuked by my senior partner — my uncle — for believing Kinsey. Uncle did not find Kinsey’s findings that shocking, as he had been a GP for many years. Rather he thought that Kinsey underestimated the amount of extramarital sex — and the role of women in determining it.

• D.H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider by John Worthen is published by Penguin (£30)