Keats trained as a physician at Guy's Hospital, but abandoned medicine for poetry. Progressive tuberculosis, a family disease, led him to Italy in the hope of a cure and to join Shelley and Byron at Pisa. He died in Rome in an apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps. Since 1909 this has been a Keats-Shelley literary memorial. During World War II its most valuable manuscripts narrowly escaped destruction during the bombardment of the Cassino monastery, where they had been sent for safekeeping. Able to devote but 4 years of his short life solely to poetry, Keats achieved distinction as a major English poet known for his sensitivity and sensuous imagery.