This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We know from our clinical experience in the practice of medicine that in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, the individual and his background of heredity are just as important, if not more so, as the disease itself.
Disease | Experience | Heredity | Individual | Practice |
Love is a disease no one wants to get rid of. Those who catch it never try to get better, and those who suffer do not wish to be cured… Love is a force that will never be subdued. If we try to control it, love will destroy us. If we try to keep it, love will enslave us. If we try to understand it, love will leave us in confusion… Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows… Love is always new. No matter that we love one, two, ten times in life we are always faced with a situation we do not know. Love can take us to hell or to paradise, but always leads somewhere. We must accept it, as is the food of our existence. If we are negative we, seeing starve the tree branches laden life, without courage to reach out and pick fruit. It is necessary to find love where you are, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness. Because the moment we left in search of love, love comes to us also. And save us.
Control | Courage | Destroy | Disease | Force | Hell | Life | Life | Love | Means | Search | Wants | Will | Understand |
Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams
For many, negative thinking is a habit, which over time, becomes an addiction... A lot of people suffer from this disease because negative thinking is addictive to each of the Big Three -- the mind, the body, and the emotions. If one doesn't get you, the others are waiting in the wings.
The diagnosis of disease is often easy, often difficult, and often impossible.
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I believe that if we stop to think, it is clear that our very survival, even today, depends upon the acts and kindness of so many people. Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents; later in life, when facing the sufferings of disease and old age, we are again dependent on the kindness of others.
Pierre Abelard, aka Abailard or Abaelard or Habalaarz
Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.
And as in men's bodies, so in government, that disease is most serious which proceeds from the head.
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Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
It would be simplistic to say that Divine Providence caused the fall of Communism. In a certain sense Communism as a system fell by itself. It fell as a consequence of its own mistakes and abuses. It proved to be a medicine more dangerous than the disease itself. It did not bring about true social reform, yet it did become a powerful threat and challenge to the entire world. But it fell by itself, because of its own inherent weakness.
Challenge | Disease | Providence | Sense | System |
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
If men were equally at risk from this condition -- if they knew their bellies might swell as if they were suffering from end-stage cirrhosis, that they would have to go nearly a year without a stiff drink, a cigarette, or even an aspirin, that they would be subject to fainting spells and unable to fight their way onto commuter trains -- then I am sure that pregnancy would be classified as a sexually transmitted disease and abortions would be no more controversial than emergency appendectomies.
Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
In spite of all humans' innate interest in the interrelatedness of all experience, long ago these world-power-structure builders learned to shunt all the bright intellectuals and the physically creative into specialist careers. The powerful reserved for themselves the far easier, because innate, comprehensive functioning. All one needs to do is to discover how self-perpetuating is this disease of specialization is to witness the inter-departmental battling for educational funds and the concomitant jealous guarding of the various specializations assigned to a department's salaried experts on each subject in any university.
Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya, aka Rabi'a of Basra or Basri, Saint Rabia of Basra
The source of my suffering and loneliness is deep in my heart. This is a disease no doctor can cure. Only Union with the Friend can cure it. Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word My choicest hours Are the hours I spend with You – O God, I can’t live in this world Without remembering You– How can I endure the next world Without seeing Your face? I am a stranger in Your country And lonely among Your worshippers: This is the substance of my complaint.
R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing
Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.
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So, what is the task of the medical system? Our modern view of disease is that disease is centered in the body. The older view of disease is that it is soul loss, a loss of connection, of meaning, of purpose, of essence. If this is so, the real task of the medical system is to heal soul loss, to aid in the retrieval of the soul. The entire culture is ill with soul loss. What is needed is not to bring spirit into our work, to develop more of a spiritual practice or to go to church more. Our task is to recognize that we are always on sacred ground, that there is no split between the sacred and secular. That the living god is dancing on our back. That there is no task that is not sacred in nature and no relationship that is not sacred in nature. Life is a spiritual practice. Health care, which serves life, is a spiritual practice. Disease is a spiritual path, too. Much illness is caused by the loss of the soul. Many, many people live lives that are empty. This emptiness is caused, in some part, by living without meaning, or with meaning that is much too small, too trivial, or too material for the needs of a human being.
Aid | Church | Culture | Disease | God | Health | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | People | Practice | Relationship | Sacred | Soul | Spirit | System | Loss | God |
Man is the individualized expression or reflection of God imaged forth and made manifest in bodily form. How is it, then, I hear it asked, that man has the limitations that he has, that he is subject to fears and forebodings, that he is liable to sin and error, that he is the victim of disease and suffering? There is but one reason. He is not living, except in rare cases here and there, in the conscious realization of his own true Being, and hence of his own true Self.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Prayer and the company of holy men. You cannot get rid of an ailment without the help of a physician. But it is not enough to be in the company of religious people only for a day. You should constantly seek it, for the disease has become chronic. Again, you can't understand the pulse rightly unless you live with a physician. Moving with him constantly, you learn to distinguish between the pulse of phlegm and the pulse of bile.
Disease | Distinguish | Enough | People | Learn | Understand |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
The disease of worldliness is like typhoid. And there are a huge jug of water and a jar of savoury pickles in the typhoid patient's room. If you want to cure him of his illness, you must remove him from that room. The worldly man is like the typhoid patient. The various objects of enjoyment are the huge jug of water, and the craving for their enjoyment is his thirst. The very thought of pickles makes the mouth water; you don't have to bring them near. And he is surrounded with them. The companionship of woman is the pickles. Hence treatment in solitude is necessary.
Disease | Enjoyment | Man | Solitude | Thought | Woman | Companionship | Thought |
René Dubos, fully René Jules Dubos
Eradication of microbial disease is a will-o'-the-wisp; pursuing it leads into a morass of hazy biological concepts and half-truths.
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