Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

Death is not the ultimate tragedy of life. The ultimate tragedy is depersonalization—dying in an alien and sterile area, separated from the spiritual nourishment that comes from being able to reach out to a loving hand, separated from a desire to experience the things that make life worth living, separated from hope.

It all began, I said, when I decided that some experts don’t really know enough to make a pronouncement of doom on a human being.

This principle was underlined for me by a New York City doctor who telephoned to say he had terminal cancer. He said he had been prompted by the NEJM article to try to get the most out of life while he was still mobile and capable of making direct contact with all the things that gave him pleasure.

a great failure of medical schools is that they pay so little attention to the science of nutrition.

At any rate, long before my own serious illness, I became convinced that creativity, the will to live, hope, faith, and love have biochemical significance and contribute strongly to healing and to well-being. The positive emotions are life-giving experiences.

The war against microbes has been largely won, but the struggle for equanimity is being lost.

I had a fast-growing conviction that a hospital is no place for a person who is seriously ill.

If the physician allows machinery to be interposed between him and the patient, he will be in danger of forfeiting powerful healing influences.

We gorge the senses and starve the sensitivities.