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

What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?

’Tis a portentous sign / When a man sweats and at the same time shivers.

Diseases, at least many of them, are like human beings. They are born, they flourish, and they die.

We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object.

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

The best quarantine is hygiene.

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

All the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.

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

Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.