Dickens understood the danger of treating illness as a battle

I have seen several people commenting on the nonsense of commending people who 'fight' an illness.

As one pointed out, when you are ill you are not a combatant but the battlefield.

Dickens, of course, was there first. In the opening chapter of Dombey and Son, Mrs Dombey is dying after giving birth, but all family and medical opinion agrees that she need only 'make an effort' to be saved:

Now, really, Fanny my dear,’ said the sister-in-law, altering her position, and speaking less confidently, and more earnestly, in spite of herself, ‘I shall have to be quite cross with you, if you don’t rouse yourself. It’s necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps a very great and painful effort which you are not disposed to make; but this is a world of effort you know, Fanny, and we must never yield, when so much depends upon us. Come! Try! I must really scold you if you don’t!’

And that is the problem with the metaphor of illness as a battle. It suggests that if you die you just didn't fight hard enough.