Sublime

the possibility of the world’s health will have to be defined in the characters of persons as clearly and as urgently as the possibility of personal “success” is now so defined.

The most important epidemics of psychosomatic disorders are those associated with pain.

the mind was influenced by the body, the doctor had a part to play in teaching virtue.

People who are treated as less than fully human by the social order are more susceptible to tuberculosis. But it’s not because of their moral codes or choices or genetics; it’s because they are treated as less than fully human by the social order.

I find the photographs cheering, reminders of my patients not as patients, but as people, of their lives beyond what I recorded in their medical charts.

All societies possess medical beliefs: ideas of life and death, disease and cure, and systems of healing. Schematically speaking, the medical history of humanity may be seen as a series of stages. Belief systems the world over have attributed sickness to illwill, to malevolent spirits, sorcery, witchcraft and diabolical or divine intervention. Such