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Yes you can die from sadness

It's not asthma, it's because of the corset. Because of corsets women back then had respiratory problems for silly issues (silly to our contemporary eyes), like strong scents or even embarrassing situations, like happens to madame de Tourvel. And she was even lucky, some women fainted instead of showing just anxiety symptoms.
Btw, as stated previously, she probably dies because her depression is badly handled by those pedestrian-XVIII-century
physicians
, as they were called. Moreover, let's not forget that until late XIX century the origin of psychical diseases was almost entirely unknown.

she quite delicate to begin with, her phisyc look so fragile compared to others in this movie. she got ashtma attack every times vicount near her.
maybe she already had an illness, the stress from heart broken just accelerate it

No but you can die from being stupid! And you probably will!

There was this thing people had in those days about
going into a decline
when thwarted in love. One becomes
morose
(depressed,)
vapourish
(cries incessantly), and disinterested in the normal pursuits of the day (eating, drinking, washing, getting out of bed.) What we would call having a pity party for ourselves.
Instead of realizing that this is a stage, which the patient will eventually get over, they called in the doctor. Calling for a doctor in those days was begging for trouble.
The first thing most competent, contemporary doctors would do was to bleed the patient. In this case, by cupping. The cups are heated, small incisions are made though the skin, and a cup is placed over the incision. As the cup cools, the air in the cup contracts, drawing blood through the incision from the body into the cup. You repeat a couple of times, and in a few days, if the patient has not improved, repeat again.
Now, instead of just being morose and depressed the patient is also anemic, and, since the doctor never washes his knives, or his hands, the incisions have probably become septic. From there it is a small step to infection, fever the shock of blood loss and death.
So, you see,
diegoag88
, with the help of a doctor, people in those days really could die of a broken heart.

Wasn't it mentioned in the film that she was very fragile anyway, physically? It was certainly shown that she was quite delicate, but I could swear there was a line early on about her never having been truly strong or well physically.

People said love was blind, but what they meant was that love blinded them.

Bleeding was performed to bring down the dangerous fever that she had. Cupping was used to stimulate blood flow to help her organs.

Yesit can. Old people can die with in days, weeks, even hours of each other. People can die within a short period of time that their children die. People can and do die of depression, hopelessness, giving up.

I think George Washington died this way.

At first I thought she had tried to kill herself; she may have had tuberculosis, or consumption as they called it back then. It certainly would explain her wasting away and the cupping was a treatment that would have been applied. Such a shame that they believed that bleeding a patient helped cure them - so many were lost through weakness and literally being bled to death.
English MA: Symbolism/my life. Truth vs the world - Boudicca of the Iceni

Could you please satisfy my curiosity as to why someone comes to the message board prior to watching a film? The parental advisory can tell you/warn you about what might concern you prior to viewing so why not just go there instead of chancing spoilers which are always on the message boards? Thank you. Cheers.
"I say,open this door at once! We're British !"

maybe you should change the title instead of giving the film away

Yes you can.
Madame de Tourvel had very pure feelings, and when she surrenders to Valmont she's unable to suppose that he'll leave her after only 4 months. She believes very hard he loves her and was about to kill himself if he couldn't get her -he wasn't sincere we know.
And he leaves her in a very mean way -telling her, suggesting she could seek another lover. That's unbearable to hear that for anyone, and worst for someone like her. When pain confines brain over limits, the body expresses it and follows.

depression and anemia, exacerbated by bad medical practices, maybe infection from the bleeding, and then finally a high fever finishes her off.
Sad, but true.

Certainly possible, although they would have taken much longer to kill, I think. After all, if she had one, she got it from him, and he wasn't dying.
I think the other posters have the best explanations: depression and anemia, exacerbated by bad medical practices, maybe infection from the bleeding, and then finally a high fever finishes her off.

I was uncertain about this too, but am I the only one who thought she had a sexually transmitted disease?

rrb and jingizu are right.
It is a "disguised" suicide. Not that you actually hang yourself of shoot yourself. But you "let" your body become weak by not taking care of yourself (not eating because you lost your appetite because of the grief, not enough sleep, pushing yourself to the limit in your work etc).
It is suspected that is the way many older people die now a days: they are depressed and in a way want to die, so they just don't take their medication anymore, eat lessetc. It can take you years to die in that way, but it is suspected that quite a few people die that way. This way of dying is not taken into any statistic because usually nobody knows about it at the time of death. It's easier to catalogue someone who died from a heart attack or cancer

Agreed with you rrb.
It is not that unusual. One can actually die from grief, just as rrb says above, people stop eating, stop taking care of themselves physically, etc. They "waste away" and die, usually from infection due to their weaker immune system. My grandma's cousin died that way, her fiance died in WWII and she just wandered about the house, never eating, becoming a shadow and about two months after the news she just died, heart failure due to stress on the body.
As to Madame de Tourvel, she exhibited all the classic symptoms. She also wanted to die but not commit suicide. She not only grieved terribly for losing Valmont, but also because she betrayed her husband, her vows, her beliefs and honour. So between guilt and grief she just "wasted away" and the blood letting of the era definitely did not help.

I thought she had tried to kill herself.
Where'd you get that idea?

I thought she had tried to kill herself. And what is 'cupping'?

People die from the effects of stress every day. Why would you think they can't die from the effects of other emotional states, like grief? That too can have a profound impact on one's health: loss of appetite, insominia, lowered immunity to infection - all of which could contribute to one's death. Have you never heard of people whose death shortly follows that of a loved one - say a spouse of many years? Sad, but not that unusual.

It's maybe not something you can actually die from but it was believed that you could at the time the novel was written. It's probably better to view it as a literary device rather than examine it too closely. She succumbs to
a fever
on hearing the news of Valmont's death.

The book might add some illumination. Based on what we see in the movie, it's very possible that her death was caused, or at least contributed to by, excessive bloodletting. This could have exacerbated a then-unknown preexisting condition, like anemia or low blood pressure.