Thomas Sydenham Quotes

Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.

Illness is a clumsy attempt to arrive at health: we must come to nature's aid with intellect.

I'm not ill, I'm just pale.

Medicine involves dealing with people who are going through changes and cycles, often people trapped in bodies that are going out from under them. Spending time with them lets you think their way, gives you insights as a writer.

I was a sickly child, and it wasn't until I was 19 that I realised I was quite a robust, vigorous person. Since then I've taken ill health to be an irritating interruption into what is a fairly reliable stream of good health.

I am much perturbed by this business of sickness. Our bodies seem so easily to leap into the saddle where our minds should be. People who are ill become changelings.

The closest I ever came to death was masturbating with a 104-degree temperature.

I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.

if you don't get sick, you won't get well.

Nature, time and patience are three great physicians.

There are no incurable ills.

You must take a house beside the Physician. It will be a miracle if ye be the first sick that Christ hath put away uncured.

We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life's routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse , and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.

People are amazed because I don't get much with the colds. Sometimes in the spring or in the fall, I'll get a little hay fever.

The mind, in addition to medicine, has powers to turn the immune system around.

Whenever we are ill, we need to search our hearts to see what we need to forgive.

Almost no germ is unconditionally dangerous to man; its disease-producing ability depends upon the body's resistance.

When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.

I pray for people I love when they are sick. I pray that way.

While the sick man has life, there is hope.

Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.

Nature alone cures. ... what nursing has to do ... is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.

The sun - my almighty physician.

Since the most ancient times, all men, and particularly those who endeavored in the practice of medicine, have brought closer together two natural phenomena of capital importance: illness or fever and fermentation.