Friday, October 24, 2008

Quotation From a Grocery Store Advertisement

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Add some cheese and a glass of wine, however, and that doctor may just drop by unnanounced.

Trader Joe's Fearless Flyer
October 2008

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Bliss

"The filling up of the arsenal, with the sulfonamides in the 1930s, then penicillin and the other antibiotics in the 1940s and 1950s, then drug upon drug, made many physicians too confident of their powers, and many laymen too certain that their doctors had a quick fix for every sickness. The trouble with being able to work miracles, virtually raising people from the dead, is that it tends to replace one kind of religion with another, one set of priests with another."

Michael Bliss, The Discovery of Insulin

Thursday, May 29, 2008

A Leg to Stand On: Oliver Sacks

"...in this limbo, this dark night, I could not turn to science. Faced with a reality, which reason could not solve, I turned to art and religion for comfort. It was these, and these only, that could call through the night, could communicate, could make sense, make more intelleigble--and tolerable 'We have art, in order that we may not perish from the truth' (Nietzsche). "

Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up from the depths of the earth. --Psalms 71:20

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Definitions

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

This verse found in 1 Timothy 5:8 came up as part of one of the conversations this afternoon. One of the women I was talking with asked what the meaning of infidel was. When her mother and I couldn't give a precise definition, I took the dictionary down from the shelf. Our own definitions were "loser" and "worthless". What I found surprised me. The dictionary defines infidel as "an unbeliever" or "someone without religious beliefs".
Isn't it interesting to think that in the past it was a great insult to be called an unbeliever. Isn't it a pity that so many do not care, or even "glory" in their lack of faith!

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Underground

The room had been described in the house agent's list as a 'convenient breakfast-room in basement,' and in the day-time it was rather dark. This did not matter so much in the evenings when the gas was alight, but then it was in the evening that the blackbeetles got so sociable, and used to come out of the low cupboards on each side of the fireplace where their homes were, and try to make friends with the children. At least, I suppose that was what they wanted, but the children never would.

The Phoenix and the Carpet
E. Nesbit

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Recipe

I am convinced that a recipe should not be a set of rules to be followed to the letter for a mind-numbingly uniform result, but when I hear someone praising a recipe because it always works, my heart sinks a little. I believe a recipe should be treated as a living thing, something allowed to breathe, to change its nature to suit our ingredients, our mood and our desires.

~Nigel Slater
Appetite

Monday, January 14, 2008

Continuing Education

But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temp'rance over appetite, to know
Or measure what the mind may we'-l contain ;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly', as nourishment to wind.
~John Milton
Paradise Lost
Book VII Line 126ff

Friday, January 11, 2008

THE ART OF HEALING

(In Memoriam David Protetch, M. D.)

Most patients believe
dying is something they do,
not their physician,
that white-coated sage,
never to be imagined
naked or married.

Begotten by one,
I should know better. 'Healing,'
Papa would tell me,
'is not a science,
but the intuitive art
of wooing Nature.

Plants, beasts, may react
according to the common
whim of their species,
but all humans have
prejudices of their own
which can't be foreseen.

To some, ill-health is
a way to be important,
others are stoics,
a few fanatics,
who won't feel happy until
they are cut open.'

Warned by him to shun
the sadist, the nod-crafty,
and the fee-conscious,
I knew when we met,
I had found a consultant
who thought as he did,

yourself a victim
of medical engineers
and their arrogance,
when they atom-bombed
your sick pituitary
and over-killed it.

'Every sickness
is a musical problem,'
so said Novalis,
'and every cure
a musical solution':
You knew that also.

Not that in my case
you heard any shattering
discords to resolve:
to date my organs
still seem pretty sure of their
self-identity.

For my small ailments
you, who were mortally sick,
prescribed with success:
my major vices,
my mad addictions, you left
to my own conscience.

Was it your very
predicament that made me
sure I could trust you,
if I were dying,
to say so, not insult me
with soothing fictions?

Must diabetics
all contend with a nisus
to self-destruction?
One day you told me:
'It is only bad temper
that keeps me going.'

But neither anger
nor lust are omnipotent,
nor should we even
want our friends to be
superhuman. Dear David,
dead one, rest in peace,

having been what all
doctors should be, but few are,
and, even when most
difficult, condign
of our biassed affection
and objective praise.

~ W. H. Auden (1907-1973)