Sick

“ Consider, and in order to understand something better what hell is, set before your eyes a poor sick man lying on his bed, burning with a pestilential fever, attended with a universal pain over all his body, his head perfectly rent asunder, his eyes ready to fly out, his teeth raging, his sides pierced with dreadful stitches, his belly racked with violent cholic ”

“ Let him see in the sick-chamber, where the outward and inward world seem alike to the sufferer to be crumbling asunder, how irresistible is the conviction of an upholding power, new-modelling all decaying things, and imbuing them{173} with immortality. If he himself can but learn what protracted sickness is, let him ponder well whether a superstition, however early and solemnly conveyed and cherished, could stand the stress,—not merely of pain, but of the questionings prompted by pain. ”

“ But if he be once sick, then it is a death unto him and a grief insupportable, which doth aggravate his malady, to have one at his bedside sounding ever in his ears; See what comes of your drunkenness, your idleness, your surfeiting and gluttony, your wenching and lechery, these are the causes of your disease. ”

“ The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so, by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters, in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition. ”

“ And the pain grows, expands,—fills all the skull,—forces you to cry out, replaces all other sensations except a weak consciousness, vanishing and recurring, that you are very sick, more sick than ever before in all your life. ”

“ The sick, too, are sitting at the doorways as the marchesa passes by. The mark of fever is on many an ashy cheek. These sick have been carried from their beds to breathe such air as evening brings. Air! ”

“ However, there is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before. ”

“ It seems to me at times now as if those of us who remain had been very sick, and then, when we had become convalescent, had been ordered by some cruel fate to remain sitting in our sick-rooms forever. ”

“ I knew once in this town one of the most learned men in that profession and the most expert, and the most famous too, and him who did the greatest cures upon other men. And yet when he was himself once very sore sick, I heard his fellows who then took care of him—every one of whom would, in his own disease, have used his help before that of any other man—wish that yet, while his own sickness was so sore, he had known no physic at all. ”

“ One day, a hot sickness touched him with its finger, and he became no more than a sick man alone among his possessions, the sport of dreams and devils and shadows; sometimes a log and sometimes a lunatic crying in delirium. ”

“ But then no human soul Could be more sweet when one of us is sick. We run to colds, have measles, mumps, our throats Are weak, the doctor says. If rooms were warmer, And clothes were warmer, food more regular, And sleep more regular, it might be different. ”

“ We talk of the infection of a fever, but we often forget that prejudices are infinitely more infectious. The poor man, ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clad, destitute, heart-sick, and weary, falls victim to the first epidemic that crosses his path. ”

“ It is incredible that such things should happen, but in the confusion caused by a sudden and severe illness, untidy and careless habits are apt to come to the surface, and loom largely as aggressive faults. Sickness is not only a great test of the sufferer’s own character and disposition, but of those of the people around him, and as a general rule, I have discovered more beautiful qualities in sick people, and those about them, who dwell in cottages or even hovels, than in more splendid homes. ”

“ Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. But here they are threatened to be brought upon his enemies as tokens of his wrath, and designed for their ruin. So that according to the temper of our spirits, under sickness, accordingly it is to us a blessing or a curse. But, whatever sickness may be to particular persons, it is certain that epidemical diseases raging among a people are national judgments, and are so to be accounted. He here threatens, [1.] Painful diseases (v. 35) , a sore botch, beginning in the legs and knees, but spreading, like Job's boils, from heat to foot. ”

“ And assuredly there are some who could tell how, in the midst of anguish, the briefest suggestion of endurance, the slightest spiritual touch upon deep filial affections, has made a miraculous truce for them with torment and despair.
Observers of the sick think very seriously of their liability to become wedded to their own ways, and engrossed by their own occupations. The fact is as they see it ”

“ If you knew how unreasonably sick people suffer from reasonable causes of distress, you would take more pains about all these things. An infant laid upon the sick bed will do the sick person, thus suffering, more good than all your logic. ”

“ She has no equal as a comforter of the sick. [viii] What land, what street, what house has not felt the smitings of disease? Tens of thousands of sick beds! What shall we do with them? Shall man, with his rough hand, and heavy foot, and impatient bearing, minister? No; he cannot soothe the pain. He can not quiet the nerves. He knows not where to set the light. ”

“ I look about me in the world, and nearly everybody I know is sick. I could name one after another a hundred men and women, who are doing vital work for progress and carrying a cruel handicap of physical suffering. ”

“ Is Brutus sick, and is it physical To walk unbraced and suck up the humors Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick, And will he steal out of his wholesome bed To dare the vile contagion of the night And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air To add unto his sickness? ”

“ Magic-making in cases of sickness includes the blowing, sucking, and so forth, already described. The relatives of the patient will discourse at length on the story of the sickness, and the medicine-man will either announce who sent it himself or expound the sick person’s dreams and therefrom deduct the source of evil. ”

“ It is proverbial that as long as you read a medical work you will be sick; and the sedulous housewife of homœopathy, searching Jahr, ever ready with pellet and powder to put you into a sweat, to move the bowels, or to produce sleep, is sowing the seed of sickness by day and by night; and her household will follow her example, and reap the reward of leaning on matter that proves a broken reed. ”

“ I will spread sickness in the world and you will cure it. Your fame will go abroad and people will send for you and pay you handsomely. This is how we’ll work together: when you hear of a person taken sick, go to his house and offer to cure him. ”

“ There is a growing tendency to discriminate between sickness and illness, limiting the words sick and sickness to some slight disturbance of the physical system, as nausea, and applying the words ill and illness to protracted disease and disordered health. ”

“ DR. HELSHAM'S ANSWER.
⁠THE doctor's first rhyme would make any Jew sick:
I know it has made a fine lady in blue sick,
For which she is gone in a coach to Killbrew sick,
Like a hen I once had, from a fox when she flew sick:
Last Monday a lady at St. Patrick's did spew sick:
And made all the rest of the folks in the pew sick,
The surgeon who bled her his lancet out drew sick,
And stopt the distemper, as being but new sick.
The yacht, the last storm, had all her whole crew sick;
Had we two been there, it would have made me and you sick:
A lady that long'd, is by eating of glew sick ”

“ Whenever the people would see her sitting thus, they began to murmur among themselves, saying that she was trying to make some one sick, and that some body would be sick. If some one should become sick anywhere within a distance of a number of miles from her, their first thought was that she had made them sick, and she was the one that could cure them. ”

“ Every one knows the tendency of disease to produce irritation,—sometimes imperceptibly to the sufferer, sometimes unavoidably, and with a painful consciousness. In no duty or sympathy for the sick is there more need of kind allowance ”

“ All know the importance of sustaining the hopes of a sick man. The reason of this, is, that his nervous system is then, vastly more than in health, susceptible to the influence of particular states of the mind. ”

“ She should note all the symptoms of the patient, and do everything in her power to promote comfort and recovery. She should anticipate the wishes, and not cause the patient to ask for everything which is desired. So far as practicable, let the wishes be gratified. The senses of the sick often become morbidly acute, and those things which in health would pass unnoticed, in sickness are so magnified as to occasion annoyance and vexation. Sick persons are not all alike, and the peculiarities of each must be studied separately. ”

“ By bearing patiently with the pains of sickness, a great, and perhaps the greater, part of the crown which is prepared for us in Heaven is completed. The sick sometimes complain that in sickness they can do nothing ”

“ It begins strong, and louder than a sick man can make; the second cry is lower, but not less doleful, but rather more so; the third yet lower, and soft, like the groaning of a sick man almost spent and dying.’ A person ‘well remembering the voice’ and coming to the sick man’s bed, ‘shall hear his groans exactly like’ those which he had before heard from the Cyhyraeth. ”

“ Every house has its favorite, and some of these are regarded as especially clever in curing sickness. It being a very unhealthful, low-lying district where my school was, I contracted malarial fever, and went to bed very sick. ”

“ An old man used to say, “If it should happen that a sickness of the body overtake thee, let it not be grievous unto thee, for if thy Lord wisheth thee to be sick in the body, who art thou that thou shouldst be in despair? ”

“ For a long time I have known that my sickness was like your own—the sickness that no doctor can cure. Through the long nights, when others slept, I have sat alone under the stars, and the voices of the darkness have taught me many things. ”

“ And again, when sickness is to be cured, he tries to subdue the demons of disease—to neutralise their action or to entice them out of the body of the patient—by imitating in pantomime the symptoms of the particular complaint. ”

“ He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place. ”

“ To suffer from intelligence in such an atmosphere as this is a disease—the silent sickness—of which such symptoms as the lips tight bound, the heart heavy, and an aching void behind the eyes, are common to all its victims. ”

“ The more dangerous and apparently nearer death the sick person is, the more rigorous should be the observance of this suggestion. Nor should the sick-room be opened to privileged classes; for the excitement caused by a visit from relations and the virtuous, will do as much injury to the sick, as that produced by strangers and the vicious. ”

“ She mended at first, but now she's anew sick.
Captain Butler made some in the church black and blue sick.
Dean Cross, had he preach'd, would have made us all pew-sick.
Are not you, in a crowd when you sweat and you stew, sick? ”

“ Does disease dispute the empire of Mind, dethrone it, and take the government into its own hands? Is sickness an aggressive, self-constituted material power, that copes astutely with Mind, and finally conquers it? Has God endowed matter with power to disable Mind, and chill harmony with a long, cold night of discord? ”

“ The sick man is visited by an insincere sympathiser, who is all eyes to note symptoms of increasing weakness, and all tongue, as soon as he gets out of the sick-room, to give the result, which is to his malice the better the worse it is. ”

“ The refreshing pleasure from the first view of nature, after the pain of illness, and the confinement of a sick-chamber, is above the conceptions, as well as the descriptions, of those in health. ”

“ Many patients cannot tell when they are sick, nor when they suffer pain, but they show sickness and pain, and often appeal by their manner for that care and sympathy, we all feel in need of at such times. ”

“ The sick are more deplorably lost than the sinning, if the sick cannot rely on God for help and the sinning can. ”

“ Another expedient, but principally connected with children's ailments, is to trap the malevolent demon who has induced the sickness, and this they profess to do by laying a trail of sugar from the child's sick-bed to a well. ”