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

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

The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.

If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.

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

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.

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

The sick man is the parasite of society.

It is strange indeed that the more we learn about how to build health, the less healthy Americans become.

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

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

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

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