The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

Diseases are not immutable entities but dynamic social constructions that have biographies of their own.

Men worry over the great number of diseases, while doctors worry over the scarcity of effective remedies.

’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.

In times of pestilence, gaiety and joyousness are most profitable.

Plagues are as certain as death and taxes.

The sick man is the parasite of society.

Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.

If they prescribe a lot of remedies for some sickness or other, it means that the sickness is incurable.

Death from the bubonic plague is rated, with crucifixion, among the nastiest human experiences of all.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.