Preventable Diseases

The human body as a mechanism is far from perfect. It can be beaten or surpassed at almost every point by some product of the machine-shop or some animal. It does almost nothing...

The evil in things always bulks large in our imaginations. It is no mere coincidence that the earliest gods of a race are invariably demons. Our first conception of the great fo...

It is our pride that medicine, from an art, and a pretty black one at that, originally, is becoming a science. And the most powerful factor in this development, its indispensabl...

Ancient vibrations are hard to stop, and still harder to control. Whether they date from our driving back by the polar ice-sheet, together with our titanic Big Game, the woolly...

In all ages it has been accounted a virtue to keep your mouth shut--chiefly, of course, upon moral or prudential grounds, for fear of what might issue from it if opened. Then ca...

One of the darling habits of humanity is to discover that we are facing a crisis. One could safely offer a large prize for a group of ten commencement orations, or political pla...

Closely allied to the discovery that sunlight and fresh air are fatal to the microörganisms of tuberculosis came the consoling fact that these bacilli, though most horribly ubiq...

Not only have most diseases a living cause, and a consequent natural history and course, but they have a special method of attack, which looks almost like a preference. It seems...

Why should not a disease have a natural history, as well as an individual? At first sight, this might appear like a reversion to the old, crude theory of disease as a demonic ob...

That was a dark and stern saying, "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission," and, like all the words of the oracles, of limited application. But it proves true in so...

Why is a disease a disease of childhood? First and fundamentally, because that is the earliest period at which a human being can have it. But the problem goes deeper than this....

We were not made all at once, nor do we go to pieces all at once, like the "one-hoss shay." This is largely because we are not all of the same age, clear through. Some parts of...

Malaria has probably killed more human beings than all the wars that have ever devastated the globe. Some day the epic of medicine will be written, and will show what a large an...

What's in a name? All the aches and pains that came out of Pandora's box, if the name happens to be rheumatism. It is a term of wondrous elasticity. It will cover every imaginab...

Our principal dread of a wound is from fear that it may fester instead of healing quickly. We don't exactly enjoy being shot, or stabbed, or scratched, though, as a matter of fa...

The imagination of the race has ever endowed Cancer with a peculiar individuality of its own. Although it has vaguely personified in darkest ages other diseases, like the Plague...

Greatness always has its penalties. Other ills besides death love a shining mark. Pain is one of them, and headache its best exemplar. If there be one thing about our bodies of...

Nerves are real things. In spite of their connection with imaginary diseases and mental disturbances, there is nothing imaginary or unsubstantial about them. There is no more ge...

One of the dearest delusions of man through all the ages has been that his body is under the control of his mind. Even if he didn't quite believe it in his heart of hearts, he h...