Sickness

“ Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shall not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better. ”

“ Should sickness come—sickness almost always occasioned by unwholesome food, want of fresh air, necessary attention, and good rest; sickness, often so enervating as to render work impossible; though not so dangerous as to procure the sufferer a bed in an hospital—what becomes of the hapless wretches then? The mind hesitates, and shrinks from dwelling on such gloomy pictures. ”

“ 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 fact is, the knowledge of the symptoms of disease is, to a mother, almost a sealed book. If she were better acquainted with these matters, how much more useful would she be in a sick-room, and how much more readily would she enter into the plans and views of the medical man! By her knowledge of the symptoms, and by having his advice in time, she would nip disease in the bud, and the fight might end in favor of life, for “sickness is just a fight between life and death.” ”

“ Turning now to the time of severe illness, it is easy to say, but it is none the less true, that it may be a great grace; and like other graces, if neglected, it becomes the reverse. We are speaking of course of a grave and serious illness, whether or not there be danger to life. One of the most remarkable phenomena in our strangely complex nature is the sudden and complete way in which our most acute anxieties disappear at the touch of sickness. ”

“ There are numerous sorts of Diseases, to which Human Creatures are subject; and yet there are but few Fundamental Maladies; which are these as follow; Pain, Sickness, Weakness, Dizziness, Numbness, Deadness, Madness, Fainting and Swounding; of which one is particular, the rest are general: The particular is Sickness, to which no parts of the Body are subject, but the Stomack: for, though any parts of the Body may have Pain, Numbness, Dizziness, Weakness, or Madness; yet in no part can be that which we name Sickness, but the Stomack. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I name these facts to show that disease has a mental origin, — that faith in rules of health or in drugs begets and fosters disease, by attracting the mind to the subject of sickness, by exciting fear of it, and by dosing the body in order to avoid it. ”

“ But our cradle and couch are haunted now with disease, which I doubt not wisdom, knowledge of Nature's laws, and the true religion of the flesh, will one day enable us to avoid. Now sickness attends our rising up and our lying down. ”

“ All rose up with pleasure at this proposal. And they commenced to invent diseases so fast that they had soon named every kind of sickness that you ever heard of. Had they thought of many more, no human beings would now be alive. ”

“ The numbness steadily ascended, and seven years from the day the malady first displayed itself the sickness had eaten its way into the patient's brain and had hardened it into stone exactly as it had hardened the muscles, flesh and skin of his body. Then death relieved the sufferer. ”

“ Sickness is a germ of belief, springing from a seed of thought, either your own or another's; its soil is mortal mind, and you have a crop abundant or scanty according to the seedlings in that soil, sown by yourself or others. Materia medica, physiology, treatises on health obtained and sustained by what is termed material law, sickness produced and cured by the same law, are the sowers and husbandmen of sickness and disease. ”

“ Humanity is awakening to the fact that sickness, in a large percentage of cases, is an error—of body and mind. Ignorance of the injurious effects of wrong foods, drinks, habits and methods is gradually being overcome. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore to cure the former, she requested a sickness in extremity, even to death, in her own and other's conceit; a sickness full of bitter pain and anguish, depriving her of all outward refreshments, and of all inward comforts also, which might affect the sensual portion of the soul. ”

“ The sooner we realize and acknowledge that sickness, far from being the arbitrary visitation of an offended God, or the test of an unwise Providence, is the result of our own error or sin, the sooner shall we enter upon the highway of health.
Disease comes to those who attract it, to those whose minds and bodies are receptive to it, and flees from those whose strong, pure, and positive thought-sphere generates healing and life-giving currents. ”

“ It is near hand two thousand years since the physicians had knowledge of three hundred divers notable sicknesses by name, besides other small sicknesses and new, as daily spring among us, and besides age also, which is of itself a sickness inevitable. ”

“ My publications alone heal more sickness than an unconscientious student can begin to reach. If patients seem the worse for reading my book, this change may either arise from the frightened mind of the physician, or mark the crisis of the disease. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet, something of this chapter may still be read, and most remarkable, significant, and ofttimes blessed things are experienced in the sickroom. Who dare say that the world in its present condition would be what it still is without this check, this intruder upon the affairs of life? Most men are inclined to regard sickness as a calamity, as a positive misfortune, a smiting scourge. ”

“ As soon as symptoms of sickness appear, we thrust all our patients together, to make one another as much worse as possible, and when any one is past hope, we take credit for our humanity in stuffing him with remedies which come too late. ”

“ A fortnight of sickness and suffering, during which I did not open a book or play a note on the piano--It was only a slight influenza, sleep and diet have pulled me through--though one night when the fever tormented me with horrible visions, I was on the point of calling in a doctor, as my landlady constantly urged me to do. The people here have great faith in medicines. ”

“ You say that indigestion, fatigue, sleeplessness, cause Causes of sickness distressed stomachs and aching heads. Then causes of you consult your brain in order to remember sickness what has hurt you, when your remedy lies in forgetting the whole thing; for matter has no sensation of its own, and the human mind is all that can produce pain. ”

“ The popular mind usually estimates the danger, seriousness, and probable duration of any disease by the amount and intensity of pains, by the violence and rapidity of its development, and by the degree of disability that the sickness inflicts on a man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They like sickness, because physical pain will extort some show of interest from the bystanders, as we have seen children, who, finding themselves of no account when grown people come in, will cough till they choke, to draw attention. ”

“ A loss of appetite, sickness at the stomach, obstruction of the liver, jaundice and dropsy, hoarseness and a husky cough, which often ends in consumption, diabetes, redness and eruptions of the skin, a fetid breath, frequent and disgusting belchings, epilepsy, gout, and madness. This is the train of diseases produced by the use of ardent spirits, and the usual, natural, and legitimate consequences of their use. And now, I ask, can that which, of its own nature, produces these diseases, make a man feel better? ”

“ Any of you who have had much to do with one stricken with a sore disease, who knows he never can be well again, know that it is not the sickness, the physical weakness and pain that make the problem and the tragedy. ”

“ Only of late years, after much study and long struggle with this old belief which made us submit to sickness as a blow from the hand of God, we are beginning to learn something of the many causes of our many diseases, and how to remove some of them. ”

“ Neither can the man who draws slow and catching breaths upon the bed of deadly sickness be said to have experience of it, for the mind weakened with disease can but submit without examining too closely that which it submits to. ”

“ The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called “Living” That burned in my brain. ”

“ Health and sickness are not really, or at least necessarily, opposed; a measure of health is the efflorescence of the body, the elasticity, courage, and joyfulness of the mind, i.e., the extent to which sickness may be endured, overcome, and made tributary to health: sickness may be a stimulus to the "great health." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body. ”

“ Let people who have to observe sickness and death look back and try to register in their observation the appearances which have preceded relapse, attack, or death, and not assert that there were none, or that there were not the right ones. ”

“ Disease has no intelligence to declare itself something and announce its name. Mortal mind alone sentences itself. Therefore make your own terms with sickness, and be just to yourself and to others.
Mentally contradict every complaint from the body, and rise to the true consciousness of Life as Sin to be overcome Love, — as all that is pure, and bearing the fruits of Spirit. ”

“ If there were no ruin but sickness, we see the masters of that art can scarce number, not name all sicknesses; every thing that disorders a faculty, and the function of that, is a sickness; the names will not serve them which are given from the place affected, the pleurisy is so; nor from the effect which it works, the falling sickness is so ”

“ Now it is evident that the higher the principle the disorder of which causes the disorder in the humors, the graver is the sickness: thus a sickness which comes on the human body from the heart, which is the principle of life, or from some neighboring part, is more dangerous. ”

“ Yes, let us speak of it, and atavism, and our surroundings and diseases of the brain, and of the marrow. Is a man driven by the impulses of sickness, overwhelmed by troubles of the generative organs, responsible for his acts? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And can there be worse sickness than to know
That we are never well, nor can be so? ”