“
A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.
”
”
Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques (Classiques hachette))
“
This is the first kiss that we're both fully aware of. Neither of us hobbled by sickness or pain or simply unconscious. Our lips neither burning with fever or icy cold. This is the first kiss where I actually feel stirring inside my chest. Warm and curious. This is the first kiss that makes me want another.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
“
Whenever I'm sick, my doctor jokes that I have Beiber Fever!
”
”
Justin Bieber
“
Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.
”
”
Adrienne Rich (The Dream of a Common Language)
“
The suspense: the fearful, acute suspense: of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance; the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat violently, and the breath come thick, by the force of the images they conjure up before it; the desperate anxiety to be doing something to relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which we have no power to alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which the sad remembrance of our helplessness produces; what tortures can equal these; what reflections of endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of the time, allay them!
”
”
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)
“
I would wear pink because I knew my future was anything but rosy. I would accessorize myself to the hilt, and I would wear flirty shoes because my world needed more beauty to counter all the ugliness in it. I would wear pink because I hated gray, I didn’t deserve white, and I was sick of black.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Bloodfever (Fever, #2))
“
(Baudelaire) had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries, and had finally reached those districts of the soul where the monstrous vegetations of the sick mind flourish. There, near the breeding ground of intellectuals aberrations and disease of the mind - the mysterious tetanus, the burning fever of lust, the thyphoids and yellow fevers of crime – he had found, hatching in the dismal forcing-house of ennui, the frightening climacteric of thoughts and emotions.
”
”
Joris-Karl Huysmans (Against Nature)
“
High School is like a sickness, but trust me, soon the fever breaks and you get over it." ~She's Come Undone
”
”
Wally Lamb
“
Beached under the spumy blooms, we lie
Sea-sick and fever-dry.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)
“
A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient; nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient; and looking upon them only as sick and extravagant.
”
”
Seneca
“
I reach out and take his hand.
“Well, he probably used up a lot of resources helping me knock you out,” I say mischievously.
“Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.”
“Or what?” I ask.
“Or . . . or . . .” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.”
“What’s the problem?” I say with a grin.
“The problem is we’re both still alive. Which only reinforces the idea in your mind that you did the right thing,” says Peeta.
“I did do the right thing,” I say.
“No! Just don’t, Katniss!” His grip tightens, hurting my hand, and there’s real anger in his voice. “Don’t die for me. You won’t be doing me any favors. All right?”
I’m startled by his intensity but recognize an excellent opportunity for getting food, so I try to keep up. “Maybe I did it for myself, Peeta, did you ever think of that? Maybe you aren’t the only one who . . . who worries about . . . what it would be like if. . .”
I fumble. I’m not as smooth with words as Peeta. And while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don’t want him to die. And it’s not about the sponsors. And it’s not about what will happen back home.
And it’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. It’s him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread.
“If what, Katniss?” he says softly.
I wish I could pull the shutters closed, blocking out this moment from the prying eyes of Panem. Even if it means losing food. Whatever I’m feeling, it’s no one’s business but mine.
“That’s exactly the kind of topic Haymitch told me to steer clear of,” I say evasively, although Haymitch never said anything of the kind. In fact, he’s probably cursing me out right now for dropping the ball during such an emotionally charged moment. But Peeta somehow catches it.
“Then I’ll just have to fill in the blanks myself,” he says, and moves in to me.
This is the first kiss that we’re both fully aware of. Neither of us hobbled by sickness or pain or simply unconscious. Our lips neither burning with fever or icy cold. This is the first kiss where I actually feel stirring inside my chest. Warm and curious.
This is the first kiss that makes me want another.
But I don’t get it. Well, I do get a second kiss, but it’s just a light one on the tip of my nose because Peeta’s been distracted.
“I think your wound is bleeding again. Come on, lie down, it’s bedtime anyway,” he says.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
“
Brody, are you sick?" asked Piper.
"Yeah, do you have a fever?" Lucy asked, tugging on my shirt.
I bent down to her level as she felt my forehead. "Nope, not sick. Why?"
They looked at each other and shrugged.
"Mom was on the phone with Auntie Alexa and she said you were hot. If you're hot, you have a fever. Do you need medicine?
”
”
Beth Ehemann (Room for You (Cranberry Inn, #1))
“
They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot.
I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. Can you hear them?
I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls.
I'm growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor.
We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way.
”
”
Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)
“
I had a sudden dismal view of my future, of being led around and asked incessantly, like one of those Verizon commercials, Do you feel sick now?
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
“
I look at Ryodan and he looks at me and for a second I think we might both kill the kid. Ryodan's more stone-faced than usual, if that's possible without turning to concrete, and his fangs are out. I look down. Ryodan's sick is as big as mine. "Why the bloody hell don't you wear underwear?" To an Unseelie Prince an exposed male dick is a call to battle.
"They chafe. Too small and confining."
"Fuck you," I say.
"Dudes. Get over yourselves," the kid says.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Iced (Fever, #6))
“
Too much sleep is bad for your health, Matilda." She slipped a freshly made ball of butter into a stone crock. "It must be such a grippe, a sleeping sickness.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Fever 1793)
“
Fever supports the sick man, and love the lover.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
I’m Holden Maxwell,” Max answered immediately, in other words before I could. “I own the house Nina rented. There was a mix up, I had to be in town on personal business and Slim didn’t tell Nina. She showed up at the house and I was there. Lucky I was. She was sick as a dog, lapsed into a fever so bad she was delirious for two days and I was worried I’d have to take her to the hospital. The fever broke and since then things have advanced between us. We’ve gotten to know each other, we both like what we know and, bottom line, you didn’t take care of what was yours. Now, as Nina has explained, you’ve lost it, I found it and it’s mine.”
Excerpt From: Ashley, Kristen. “The Gamble.” Kristen Ashley. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (The Gamble (Colorado Mountain, #1))
“
You speak of love? Love is a sickness that causes men and women to do stupid things, the sorts of things that leave them sad and broken when the fever passes.
”
”
Danielle Teller (All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella's Stepmother)
“
She had always thought guilt was an emotion, but now she understood that guilt was a sickness, a fever.
”
”
Melissa Bashardoust (Girl, Serpent, Thorn)
“
As far as I can tell, it doesn't make any difference to adults how clever children are. They always stick together. Unless you are sick or dying or mortally wounded, they will always side with the other adult.
”
”
R.L. LaFevers (Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos (Theodosia Throckmorton #1))
“
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old
and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
”
”
Walt Whitman (Song of Myself)
“
I also turn to homeopathic remedies for the treatment of indigestion, travel sickness, insomnia and hay fever just to name a few. Homeopathy offers a safe, natural alternative that causes no side effects or drug interactions.
”
”
Cindy Crawford
“
He's like a sickness... Being around him is like burning up with fever. I know I'm not well, but I'm too delirious to do anything.
”
”
S.T. Gibson (A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1))
“
The Fever Bird
The fever bird sand out last night.
I could not sleep, try as I might.
My brain was split, my spirit raw.
I looked into the garden, saw
The shadow of the amaltas
Shake slightly on the moonlit grass
Unseen, the bird cried out its grief,
Its lunacy, without relief:
Three notes repeated closer, higher,
Soaring, then sinking down like fire
Only to breathe the night and soar,
As crazed, as desperate, as before.
I shivered in the midnight heat
And smelt the sweat that soaked my sheet.
And now tonight I hear again
The call that skewers though my brain,
The call, the brain-sick triple note--
A cone of pain stuck inits throat.
I am so tired I could weep.
Mad bird, for God's sake let me sleep
Why do you cry like one possessed?
When will you rest? When will you rest?
Why wait each night till all but I
Lie sleeping in the house, then cry?
Why do you scream into my ear
What no one else but I can hear?
”
”
Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1))
“
Nature had found the perfect place to hide the yellow fever virus. It seeded itself and grew in the blood, blooming yellow and running red.
”
”
Molly Caldwell Crosby (The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History)
“
On Earth, when I was a boy, most everybody got sick. Rashes, funny little fevers. All the unmodified people got sick every now and then. It's part of being human.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (Cloud Cuckoo Land)
“
Also, I hope you will appreciate that even though being sick for a week and getting a fever of over 101 degrees farenheit, I still worked on this book.
”
”
Divyansh Gupta (Human Hero War Trilogy Set (Human Hero Set Book 2))
“
Every man on earth is sick with the fever of sin, with the blindness of sin and is overcome with its fury. As sins consist mostly of malice and pride, it is necessary to treat everyone who suffers from the malady of sin with kindness and love. This is an important truth, which we often forget. Very often we act in the opposite manner: we add malice to malice by our anger, we oppose pride with pride. Thus, evil grows within us and does not decrease; it is not cured – rather it spreads
”
”
John of Kronstadt
“
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire
”
”
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
“
That’s exactly what I’m doing. So you’ll understand just how important it is that we do whatever it takes to make WICKED a success. To find a cure for this sickness, no matter the cost. No matter…the cost.
”
”
James Dashner (The Fever Code (The Maze Runner, #0.5))
“
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,
Desire his death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
”
”
William Shakespeare
“
Once, headed uptown on the 9 train, I noticed a sign posted by the Metropolitan Transit Authority advising subway riders who might become ill in the train. The sign asked that the suddenly infirm inform another passenger or get out at the next stop and approach the stationmaster. Do not, repeat, do not pull the emergency brake, the sign said, as this will only delay aid. Which was all very logical, but for the following proclamation at the bottom of the sign, something along the lines of, “If you are sick, you will not be left alone.” This strikes me as not only kind, not only comforting, but the very epitome of civilization, good government, i.e., the the crux of the societal impulse. Banding together, pooling our taxes, not just making trains, not just making trains that move underground, not just making trains that move underground with surprising efficiency at a fair price—but posting on said trains a notification of such surprising compassion and thoughtfulness. I found myself scanning the faces of my fellow passengers, hoping for fainting, obvious fevers, at the very least a sneeze so that I might offer a tissue.
”
”
Sarah Vowell
“
Four years into her marriage, Sera had woken up one morning to feel something hot and sticky in the back of her throat. For a minute, she thought it was the start of another sinus infection, but when she swallowed cautiously, her throat did not hurt. It was hate. Hate that was lodged like a bone in her throat. Hate that made her feel sick, that gave her mouth a bitter, dry taste. Hate that entered her heart like a fever, that made her lips curve downward like a bent spoon.
”
”
Thrity Umrigar (The Space Between Us)
“
The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called "Living" That burned in my brain.
”
”
Edgar Allan Poe (Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works)
“
The commonest error of the gifted scholar, inexperienced in teaching, is to expect pupils to know what they have been told. But telling is not teaching. The expression of facts that are in one's mind is a natural impulse when one wishes others to know these facts, just as to cuddle and pat a sick child is a natural impulse. But telling a fact to a child may not cure his ignorance of it any more than patting him will cure his scarlet fever. (p. 61)
”
”
Edward Lee Thorndike (Education, a First Book)
“
Often do I strive to allay the burning fever of my blood; and you have never witnessed anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as my heart. But need I confess this to you, my dear friend, who have so often endured the anguish of witnessing my sudden transitions from sorrow to immoderate joy, and from sweet melancholy to violent passions? I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy. Do not mention this again: there are people who would censure me for it.
”
”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
“
But this is not your fault—you are sick. The name of this sickness is IMAGINATION. It is a worm that gnaws out black lines on the forehead. It is a fever that drives you to escape ever farther, even if this "farther" begins where happiness ends.
”
”
Yevgeny Zamyatin (We)
“
Nostalgia was originally diagnosed as a sickness. In the 1600s, the word was coined to describe an acute physical pain that Swiss soldiers experienced when they were in the lowlands of Italy and yearning for the alpine vistas of home. Nostalgia and its symptoms (fainting, high fever, and indigestion) were so deadly that playing a particular Swiss milking song was punishable by death.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
“
Gilbert laughed and clasped tighter the girlish hand that wore his ring. Anne's engagement ring was a circlet of pearls. She had refused to wear a diamond.
"I've never really liked diamonds since I found out they weren't the lovely purple I had dreamed. They will always suggest my old disappointment ."
"But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected.
"I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes-- when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables--when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had--when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne's House of Dreams)
“
Some, perhaps, would fall by the way. Some, old or sick, would drop out of the caravan and creep away into a solitary place to die; others would be picked off by gunners, defying the law for the fancied pleasure of stopping in full flight a brave and fiercely burning life; still others, perhaps, would fall in exhaustion into the sea. But no awareness of possible failure or disaster dwelt in the moving host, flying with sweet pipings through the northern sky. In them burned once more the fever of migration, consuming with its fire all other desires and passions.
”
”
Rachel Carson (Under the Sea-Wind)
“
What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?
O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?
Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd
Than they in fearing.
What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;
I am a king that find thee, and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country's peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Henry V)
“
That this world’s general sickness doth not lie
In any humour, or one certain part;
But as thou sawest it rotten at the heart,
Thou seest a hectic fever hath got hold
Of the whole substance, not to be controlled,
And that thou hast but one way, not to admit
The world’s infection, to be none of it.
”
”
John Donne (The Complete English Poems)
“
Moor did not have tuberculosis or kidney trouble or undulant fever.He was sick with the sickness of death.Death was in every cell of his body.
”
”
William S. Burroughs
“
You missed it when you pay more attention to the damaged car in the mechanic shop than the sick human being in the hospital.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts)
“
The deleriums of fever and the recollections of dreams rise out of the remote past: what the waking and the healthy seem to have forgotten, the sleeping and the sick remember.
”
”
Paul Radestock (Schlaf und Traum : eine physiologisch-psychologische Untersuchung)
“
It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of death; to know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long, nights - such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the pent-up, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth by the unconscious helpless being before you; and to think how little the reserve, and cunning of a whole life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the wanderings of dying men; tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they should be scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds, the very name of which, has driven the boldest man away.
("The Drunkard's Death")
”
”
Charles Dickens
“
Quentin had grown up with that; the mere names were interchangeable and almost myriad. His childhood was full of them; his very body was an empty hall echoing with sonorous defeated names; he was not a being, an entity, he was a commonwealth. He was a barracks filled with stubborn back-looking ghosts still recovering, even forty-three years afterward, from the fever which had cured the disease, waking from the fever without even knowing that it had been the fever itself which they had fought against and not the sickness, looking with stubborn recalcitrance backward beyond the fever and into the disease with actual regret, weak from the fever yet free of the disease and not even aware that the freedom was that of impotence.
”
”
William Faulkner
“
In the early summer of 1846 he moved his family to a cottage in Fordham, which was then far out in the country. He was ill and Virginia was dying, so that he was in no condition to do much work. As a result, their meagre income vanished; when winter game they even lacked money to buy fuel. A friend who visited the cottage wrote a description of Virginia's plight:
There was no clothing on the bed... but a snow white spread and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat on her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth...
A public appeal for funds was made in the newspapers -- an act which Poe, of course, resented. But Virginia was beyond all human aid. She died on January 30, 1847, and her death marked the end of the sanest period in her husband's life. He plunged into the writing of a book-length mystical and pseudo-scientific work entitled Eureka, in which he set forth his theories of the universe. He intended it as a prose poem, and as such is should be judged, rather than as a scientific explanation of matters beyond it's author's ken.
”
”
Philip van Doren Stern (The Portable Poe)
“
There were a few spots on every child that only a mother knows or cares about. One is the small indentation at the base of their neck where you press your nose when they're babies and you want to wrap yourself in their smell. Another is the tiny crease behind their ear, where you plant whispers like "I love you" or "Sleep tight" as they drift off at night, bum in the air and arms akimbo. These are the spots a mother is immediately drawn to whenever her child is sick, after she presses her face against his to feel for a fever, silently praying it's just a cold.
”
”
Holly Kennedy (The Penny Tree)
“
A few years ago, long after it had been closed, Eli said he saw a girl swimming in it, coming out of the water in a bikini, laughing at her frigthtened boyfriend, seaweed snaking around her. He said she looked like a mermaid.
Deenie always pictured it like in one of those books of mythology she used to love, a girl rising from the foam gritted with pearls, mussels, the glitter of the sea.
"It looks beautiful", her mother had said once when they were driving by at night, its waters opaline. “It is beautiful. But it makes people sick.”
To Deenie, it was one of many interesting things that adults said would kill you: Easter lilles, jellyfish, copperhead snakes with their diamond heads, tails bright as sulfur. Don't touch, don't taste, don't get too close.
And then, last week.
”
”
Megan Abbott (The Fever)
“
Some, perhaps, would fall by the way. Some, old or sick, would drop out of the caravan and creep away into a solitary place to die; others would be picked off by gunners, defying the law for the fancied pleasure of stopping in full flight a brave and fiercely burning life; still others, perhaps, would fall in exhaustion into the sea...In them burned one more the fever of migration, consuming with its fires all other desires and passions.
”
”
Rachel Carson (Under the Sea-Wind)
“
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire
”
”
T.S. Eliot
“
I die, and yet not dies in me
The ardour of my love for Thee,
Nor hath Thy Love, my only goal,
Assuaged the fever of my soul.
To Thee alone my spirit cries;
In Thee my whole ambition lies,
And still Thy Wealth is far above
The poverty of my small love.
I turn to Thee in my request,
And seek in Thee my final rest;
To Thee my loud lament is brought,
Thou dwellest in my secret thought.
However long my sickness be,
This wearisome infirmity,
Never to men will I declare
The burden Thou has made me bear.
To Thee alone is manifest
The heavy labour of my breast,
Else never kin nor neighbors know
The brimming measure of my woe.
A fever burns below my heart
And ravages my every part;
It hath destroyed my strength and stay,
And smouldered all my soul away.
Guidest Thou not upon the road
The rider wearied by his load,
Delivering from the steeps of death
The traveller as he wandereth?
Didst Thou not light a beacon too
For them that found the Guidance true
But carried not within their hand
The faintest glimmer of its brand?
O then to me Thy Favour give
That, so attended, I may live,
And overwhelm with ease from Thee
The rigor of my poverty.
”
”
ذو النون المصري (Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam)
“
Fever is a symptom of your body when it is undergoing the process of fighting against illness or disorder. It is necessary to know if we get sick or ill. Most of the time, we ignore fever and let our body fight against any enemies causing bodily disorder, which includes a rise in temperature. We perspire to neutralise and balance our body temperature. Hence, fever means that our body is fighting…self-curing…a wonderful self-healing process of the well-engineered human system design by the Creator.
”
”
Waheed Ibne Musa (Johnny Fracture)
“
On Earth, when I was a boy, most everybody got sick. Rashes, funny little fevers. All the unmodified people got sick every now and then. It’s part of being human. We think of viruses as evil but in reality few are. Life usually seeks to cooperate, not fight.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (Cloud Cuckoo Land)
“
On Earth, when I was a boy, most everybody got sick. Rashes, funny little fevers. All the unmodified people got sick every now and then. It's part of being human. We think of viruses as evil but in reality few are. Life usually seeks to cooperate, not fight.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (Cloud Cuckoo Land)
“
The Place Faidherbe had the characteristic atmosphere, the overdone décor, the floral and verbal excess, of a subprefecture in southern France gone mad. The ten cars left the Place Faidherbe only to come back five minutes later, having once more completed the same circuit with their cargo of anemic Europeans, dressed in unbleached linen, fragile creatures as wobbly as melting sherbet.
For weeks and years these colonials passed the same forms and faces until they were so sick of hating them that they didn’t even look at one another. The officers now and then would take their families out for a walk, paying close attention to military salutes and civilian greetings, the wives swaddled in their special sanitary napkins, the children, unbearably plump European maggots, wilted by the heat and constant diarrhea.
To command, you need more than a kepi; you also need troops. In the climate of Fort-Gono the European cadres melted faster than butter. A battalion was like a lump of sugar in your coffee; the longer you looked the less you saw. Most of the white conscripts were permanently in the hospital, sleeping off their malaria, riddled with parasites made to order fo every nook and cranny of the body, whole squads stretched out flat between cigarettes and flies, masturbating under moldy sheets, spinning endless yarns between fits of painstakingly provoked and coddled fever.
”
”
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Journey to the End of the Night)
“
I kinda like being sick. A very strong fever. It’s the perfect condition. You get to have someone take care of you. You feel cold all day, so you snuggle up in a blanket and shiver and sweat. Warm music. The only thing you can think about is how weak your body is, so you get to forget about the rest of the world for a couple days. And my body can finally know how my brain feels like every day. Nothing matters, except how terrible your pain is. It’s like a meditation. An alignment. Then to top it all off, there’s the hope and assurance you’ll get better soon.
”
”
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
“
There is a smell that lung sickness gives people. It’s the smell of blood and congestion and fever. It’s the smell of blood mixed with air that hangs over a bed and fills a sickroom. It’s the smell of old blood, and blood that is fresh and already old. It’s the smell of a festering wound.
”
”
Robert Morgan (Gap Creek)
“
cable, and away to sea. But the wind was wanting; and to complete our helplessness, down came Hunter with the news that Jim Hawkins had slipped into a boat and was gone ashore with the rest. It never occurred to us to doubt Jim Hawkins, but we were alarmed for his safety. With the men in the temper they were in, it seemed an even chance if we should see the lad again. We ran on deck. The pitch was bubbling in the seams; the nasty stench of the place turned me sick; if ever a man smelt fever and dysentery, it was in that abominable anchorage. The six scoundrels were sitting grumbling under a sail in the forecastle; ashore we could see the gigs made fast and a man sitting in each, hard by where the river runs in. One of them was whistling "Lillibullero." Waiting was a strain, and it was decided that Hunter and I should go ashore with the jolly-boat in quest of information. The gigs had leaned to their right, but Hunter and I pulled straight in, in the direction of the stockade upon the chart. The two who were left guarding their boats seemed in a bustle at our appearance; "Lillibullero" stopped off, and I could see the pair discussing what they ought to do. Had they gone and told Silver, all might have turned out differently;
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
“
The world was a sick animal, a sort of huge cancerous tumour, a thing of bubbling liquids, whitish patches, dribbling pus, fantastic pimples of dead skin that grew in all directions, swelled up, became more and more like fuzzy hair. The right thing would be to go away, to vanish for ever from the face of the sun.
”
”
J.M.G. Le Clézio (Fever)
“
. . . Yes, I’m an aesthete. I like beauty.
Yes – poor countries are beautiful. Poor people are beautiful. It’s a wonderful feeling to have money in a country where most people are poor, to ride in a taxi through horrible slums.
Yes – a beggar can be beautiful. A beggar can have beautiful lips, beautiful eyes. You’re far from home. To you, her simple shawl seems elegant, direct, the right way to dress. You see her approaching from a great distance. She’s old, thin, and yes, she looks sick, very sick, near death. But her face is beautiful – seductive, luminous. You like her – you’re drawn to her. Yes, you think – there’s money in your purse – you’ll give her some of it.
And a voice says – Why not all of it? Why not give her all you have?
Be careful, that’s a question that could poison your life. Your love of beauty could actually kill you.
If you hear that question, it means you’re sick. You’re mentally sick. You’ve had a breakdown.
”
”
Wallace Shawn (The Fever)
“
How short?”
Now or never. And Dara was tired of staying silent.
Dara wet his lips. “When I was fifteen, I started getting drunk early. I’d open my first bottle around three in the afternoon. It meant I was wasted by the time he got home.”
Leo’s gaze caught his in the mirror, his hands frozen with scissors still in grasp. Dara looked back at him.
“Well. Eventually, he got sick of waiting for me to sober up. So one night he grabbed me by the hair”—Dara tugged at that lock twisted round his finger, tugged until it hurt—“and he dragged me into the bathroom, and he held my head under in a sink of cold water until I couldn’t breathe. Until I was choking. He only let go after I stopped fighting, that moment right before I would’ve passed out.” Dara lifted one shoulder, dropped it down. “But I guess it worked. I wasn’t drunk anymore.”
Leo was still staring at him. He didn’t say anything. Dara’s lips curled in a bitter smile.
“Cut it short enough he couldn’t do that again.
”
”
Victoria Lee (The Fever King (Feverwake, #1))
“
their base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave—a slave for life—a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the beginning and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was of but little value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of children, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They are, in the language of the slave’s poet, Whittier,— “Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever-demon strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air:— Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, From Virginia hills and waters— Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
”
”
Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave)
“
Being a King did not interest him because the heads of Kings all too often found their way to spikes on castle walls when things went wrong. But the advisors to Kings . . . the spinners in the shadows . . . such people usually melted away like evening shadows at dawning as soon as the headsman’s axe started to fall. Flagg was a sickness, a fever looking for a cool brow to heat up. He hooded his actions just as he hooded his face. And when the great trouble came—as it always did after a span of years—Flagg always disappeared like shadows at dawn. Later, when the carnage was over and the fever had passed, when the rebuilding was complete and there was again something worth destroying, Flagg would appear once more.
”
”
Stephen King
“
When Cliff has gotten sick in the past, I have not been the best of nursemaids. Especially if there's a lot going on.I want him to be like the paraplegic and just get up and walk. But I am not Jesus and Cliff is only human. And right now he's sick. If I am learning anything from the Proverbs 31 wife, I'm going to guess that being kind and loving to my husband when he's not feeling well is a lesson I need to learn.
So I resist the urge the freak out and moan and complain about all we have to do and that he just needs to suck it up and be a man and push past the fever and phlegm and pack some boxes. Instead, I push him gently into bed, pull the comforter up to his chin, and bring him cold medicine...and tell him I hope he feels better better before I quietly shut the door behind me. And resist running around the house waving my arms in despair.
Six hours later, as I'm packing up the kitchen, I see Cliff walk out of the bedroom with boxes in his hands, heading toward the office. And I breathe a silent prayer of thanks that I have indeed married a man's man. And that Tylenol works really, really well. And that honey gets a lot better results than gasoline.
”
”
Sara Horn (My So-Called Life as a Proverbs 31 Wife: A One-Year Experiment...and Its Surprising Results)
“
I’d made “Fever” Mom’s ring tone because the song was about getting the flu from being too close to someone. I thought it was a good choice because she holds me tight and kisses me all the time and she’s always blowing her nose on me and it makes me sick and gives me fever—but now I wasn’t sure it was the right ring tone after all. I didn’t want to have a sexy ring tone for Mom on my cellphone!
”
”
Miriam Toews (Fight Night)
“
Sick of body, unable to rise up, vehemently intoxicated without wine . . .
And it is as though she who visits me were filled with modesty,
For she does not pay her visits save under cover of darkness,
I freely offered her my linen and my pillows,
But she refused them, and spent the night in my bones.
My skin is too contracted to contain both my breath and her,
So she relaxes it with all sorts of sickness.
When she leaves me, she washes me
As though we had retired apart for some forbidden action.
It is as though the morning drives her away,
And her lachrymal ducts are flooded in their four channels.
I watch for her time without desire,
Yet with the watchfulness of the eager lover.
And she is ever faithful to her appointed time, but faithfulness is an evil
When it casts thee into grievous sufferings.
”
”
أبو الطيب المتنبي
“
The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called “Living” That burned in my brain. And
”
”
Edgar Allan Poe (The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe)
“
Alana was an airborne infection I’d breathed in so long ago, and I was dying to have her again—to have her breath searing my face, her walls clamping around me, and her sharp nails gouging my flesh. I was sick from her, pulsating with fever and delirious vision, but what a fucking way to go. Perhaps dying at the hands of my vicious little vixen wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but for the first time in my life, I wanted to truly live
”
”
LeTeisha Newton (Whispers in the Dark)
“
To the end of her days, she maintained that her father had “very needlessly and unkindly”13 placed her in the asylum after she’d become physically sick with brain fever—what modern-day doctors believe to be meningitis or encephalitis. Elizabeth reported that the moment she’d recovered from her physical illness (and its then-standard treatment of venesection; she’d been bled excessively in her view), her mind had recovered as well.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear)
“
He slowed a little so I could hear him better. “No, they’re night people, Ms. Lane. They’ll be up and just as willing to see me, as I am to see them. We like to keep tabs on one another. They, however, don’t have you.” A slow smile curved his lips. He was hugely pleased with the new secret weapon he had in me. I had a sudden dismal view of my future, of being led around and asked incessantly, like one of those Verizon commercials, Do you feel sick now?
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
“
The rapt pupil will be forgive for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be visrtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it wil commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature-but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all.
So where is the country of the Tsar of Death? Where is the nation of the Tsar of Life? They are not so easy to find, yet each day you step upon both one hundred times or more. Every portion of Eath is infinitely divided between them, to the smallest unit of measure, and smaller yet. Even the specks of soil war with one another. Even the atoms strangle each other in their sleep. To reach the country of the Tsar of Life, which is both impossibly near and hopelessly far, you must not wish to arrive there, but approach is stealthily, sideways. It is best to be ill, in a fever, a delirium. In the riot of sickness, when the threatened flesh rouses itself, all redness and fluid and heat, it is easiest to topple over into the country you seek.
Of course, it is just as easy, in this manner to reach the country of the Tsar of Death. Travel is never without risk.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (Deathless)
“
IV.The wounded surgeon plies the steelThat questions the distempered part;Beneath the bleeding hands we feelThe sharp compassion of the healer's artResolving the enigma of the fever chart.Our only health is the diseaseIf we obey the dying nurseWhose constant care is not to pleaseBut to remind of our, and Adam's curse,And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.The whole earth is our hospitalEndowed by the ruined millionaire,Wherein, if we do well, we shallDie of the absolute paternal careThat will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.The chill ascends from feet to knees,The fever sings in mental wires.If to be warmed, then I must freezeAnd quake in frigid purgatorial firesOf which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkThat we are sound, substantial flesh and bloodAgain, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
”
”
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
“
As awkward as our first night together was, our honeymoon was even worse. As soon as we arrived in Hawaii, I became ill with strep throat. I mostly slept and lay in the bathtub in our hotel room for a week shaking violently with a fever. Missy looked out the window at the beautiful beach and Pacific Ocean and cried. It was miserable. I was sweating profusely and thought I was going to die. We’d saved our money for months--about eight hundred dollars--to go to Hawaii, and it ended up being the worst trip of our lives. My getting sick actually saved us from the embarrassment of realizing that we couldn’t do much on eight hundred bucks anyway. We laugh now at being so naïve and young. When we went back to Hawaii for the season finale of Duck Dynasty last year, Missy was determined to make up for a lot of bad memories. I did everything she wanted to do. We went on helicopter rides, boat rides, romantic dinners, and everything else you could do in Hawaii. She got her money’s worth the second time!
”
”
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
“
So I came back to philosophy, but differently; feeling it in myself, and in those I met in talk, a fever of the blood. I had come to it as a boy from wonder at the visible world; to know the causes of things; and to feel the sinews of my mind, as one feels one’s muscles in the palaestra. But now we searched the nature of the universe, and our own souls, more like physicians in time of sickness.
It was not that we were in love with the past. We were of an age to feel the present our own, and to suppose it would never outstrip us. In painting and sculpture and verse, the names we grew passionate over looked to us as big as those of Perikles’ day, and it still half surprises me when I find them unknown to my sons. But we seldom stood to enjoy good work, as one stands before a fine view or a flower, in simple gladness that it is. As we hailed each new artist we grew angry with the former ones, as with false guides we had caught out; we hastened, though we knew not where. To freedom, we said; the sculptors no longer proportioned their forms by the Golden Number of Pythagoras, as Pheidias and Polykleitos did; and art would do great things, we said, now it had cast off its chains.
”
”
Mary Renault (The Last of the Wine)
“
Eh bien, toi, qu'est-ce qui t'arrive ? Il fait si beau temps. [...] Quelle mouche t'a piqué ?
- Je n'ai rien, dit Joachim. Mais tu as l'air échauffé. Je crois que c'en soit fini de ta baisse de température."
En effet, c'en était fini. La dépression humiliante de l'organisme de Hans Castorp était surmontée par le salut qu'il avait échangé avec Clawdia Chauchat, et, à proprement parler, c'était à la conscience qu'il avait de ce fait que tenait en réalité sa satisfaction. Oui. Joachim avait eu raison : le mercure reprenait son ascension. Lorsque Hans Castorp, de retour de sa promenade, le consulta, il monta jusqu'à 38 degrés.
”
”
Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)
“
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
- Ode to a Nightingale
”
”
John Keats (The Complete Poems)
“
The man standing in the booth placing the tickets into her hands for the fun-house loomed largely in front of her with arms comprised of iron muscle. She remembered the gray cataract that covered over one of his eyes and the terrified feeling it gave her. She had been too young to understand the malady. To her; his eye looked as though it belonged to a creature from the sea. A frightening creature composed of reptilian and fish like attributes, which would pull unsuspecting prey underneath the darkest oceans. The smile on his face, with the crooked teeth, the cigar, contrasting with the bald head and unshaven face increased her sense of panic.
”
”
Jaime Allison Parker (River at the World's Dawn (The Louhi Chronicles Book 2))
“
Power"
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.
”
”
Adrienne Rich
“
Can God take much notice of us poor people? Perhaps he only made the world for the great and the wise and the rich. It doesn’t cost him much to give us our little handful of victual and bit of clothing; but how do we know he cares for us any more than we care for the worms and things in the garden, so as we rear our carrots and onions? Will God take care of us when we die? And has he any comfort for us when we are lame and sick and helpless? Perhaps, too, he is angry with us; else why does the blight come, and the bad harvests, and the fever, and all sorts of pain and trouble? For our life is full of trouble, and if God sends us good, he seems to send bad too. How is it? How is it?
”
”
George Eliot (Complete Works of George Eliot)
“
He felt for whatever suffers and expiates. The universe seemed to him an immense sickness. He was aware of fever everywhere, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and without seeking to understand the mystery he strove to dress the wound. The fearful spectacle of created things fostered compassion in him. His sole concern was to find for himself and to inspire in others the best way to pity and comfort. What exists was for this good and exceptional priest a permanent cause of a sorrow seeking to console. There are men who toil to extract gold. He toiled to extract pity. Universal wretchedness was his mine. Suffering everywhere was but an opportunity for kindness always. ‘Love one another’: he declared this to be wholly sufficient, wished for nothing more, and herein lay his entire doctrine.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
The winter of 1942-43 was the coldest winter of the war. The Germans will never forget that winter either. The defense and siege of Stalingrad and Leningrad are highly documented historic chapters of the war. The fierce winds and diabolically low temperatures plagued all of Eastern Europe. That was the winter of our deepest despair. The people in Transnistria died by the thousands, be it of starvation or frost or sickness. Once in a while Romanian soldiers or civilians came from there and brought news from the desperate Jews. Some Romanians would accept, for remuneration, to bring some clothes, or money or food from relatives in Czernovitz. Some had no relatives left in town. In some villages, they could not find anybody who would take a message to relatives. They succumbed to typhoid fever by the thousands.
”
”
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
“
Somewhere the help don’t quit as soon as the boss walks out the door. I’m gonna need a dozen clean pens.”
The lambing barn had four rows of pens against the long walls and back-to-back in the middle. At any one time the pens could hold eighty ewes and their lambs. When things went well, a ewe came into the barn on Monday and left on Thursday, and after her apartment was renovated the shepherd could install a newcomer. When a ewe had trouble – mastitis, milk fever, pneumonia, blue bag – the pens filled with sick sheep and the sheep housing stock shrank. Penny spent a couple hours examining the ewes in the barn, medicating those that needed it, turning others with their lambs out into the sunshine. She slipped bands on lambs’ tails, checked new mothers for milk supply, milked out ewes for their colostrum, ear notched bad mothers so they could be culled.
”
”
Donald McCaig (Nop's Hope)
“
Onions! Fresh, hot, sweet onions,” Sam called as Mary Lou pulled the cart down Main Street. “Eight cents a dozen.” It was a beautiful spring morning. The sky was painted pale blue and pink—the same color as the lake and the peach trees along its shore. Mrs. Gladys Tennyson was wearing just her nightgown and robe as she came running down the street after Sam. Mrs. Tennyson was normally a very proper woman who never went out in public without dressing up in fine clothes and a hat. So it was quite surprising to the people of Green Lake to see her running past them. “Sam!” she shouted. “Whoa, Mary Lou,” said Sam, stopping his mule and cart. “G’morning, Mrs. Tennyson,” he said. “How’s little Becca doing?” Gladys Tennyson was all smiles. “I think she’s going to be all right. The fever broke about an hour ago. Thanks to you.” “I’m sure the good Lord and Doc Hawthorn deserve most of the credit.” “The Good Lord, yes,” agreed Mrs. Tennyson, “but not Dr. Hawthorn. That quack wanted to put leeches on her stomach! Leeches! My word! He said they would suck out the bad blood. Now you tell me. How would a leech know good blood from bad blood?” “I wouldn’t know,” said Sam. “It was your onion tonic,” said Mrs. Tennyson. “That’s what saved her.” Other townspeople made their way to the cart. “Good morning, Gladys,” said Hattie Parker. “Don’t you look lovely this morning.” Several people snickered. “Good morning, Hattie,” Mrs. Tennyson replied. “Does your husband know you’re parading about in your bed clothes?” Hattie asked. There were more snickers. “My husband knows exactly where I am and how I am dressed, thank you,” said Mrs. Tennyson. “We have both been up all night and half the morning with Rebecca. She almost died from stomach sickness. It seems she ate some bad meat.” Hattie’s face flushed. Her husband, Jim Parker, was the butcher. “It made my husband and me sick as well,” said Mrs. Tennyson, “but it nearly killed Becca, what with her being so young. Sam saved her life.” “It wasn’t me,” said Sam. “It was the onions.” “I’m glad Becca’s all right,” Hattie said contritely. “I keep telling Jim he needs to wash his knives,” said Mr. Pike, who owned the general store. Hattie Parker excused herself, then turned and quickly walked away. “Tell Becca that when she feels up to it to come by the store for a piece of candy,” said Mr. Pike. “Thank you, I’ll do that.” Before returning home, Mrs. Tennyson bought a dozen onions from Sam. She gave him a dime and told him to keep the change. “I don’t take charity,” Sam told her. “But if you want to buy a few extra onions for Mary Lou, I’m sure she’d appreciate it.” “All right then,” said Mrs. Tennyson, “give me my change in onions.” Sam gave Mrs. Tennyson an additional three onions, and she fed them one at a time to Mary Lou. She laughed as the old donkey ate them out of her hand.
”
”
Louis Sachar (Holes)
“
Which mirror now, Ms. Lane?” He glanced around the white room, scanning the ten mirrors.
“Fourth from the left. Jericho.” I was sick of him calling me Ms. Lane. I picked myself up off the white floor. Once again the Silver had spit me out with entirely too much enthusiasm, and I didn’t even have the stones on me. I didn’t have anything but the spear in my holster, a protein bar, two flashlights, and a bottle of Unseelie in my pockets.
“You don’t have the right to call me Jericho.”
“Why? Because we haven’t been intimate enough? I’ve had sex with you in every possible position, killed you, fed you my blood in the hopes that it would bring you back to life, crammed Unseelie into your stomach, and tried to rearrange your guts. I’d say that’s pretty personal. How much more intimate do we have to get for you to feel comfortable with me calling you Jericho? Jericho.”
I expected him to pounce on the sex-in-every-possible-position comment, but he only said. “You fed me your—”
I pushed into the mirror, cutting him off. Like the first one, it resisted me, then grabbed me and squirted me out on the other side.
His voice preceded his arrival. “You bloody fool, do you never stop to consider the consequences of your actions?” He barreled out of the mirror behind me.
“Of course I do,” I said coolly. “There’s always plenty of time to consider the consequences. After I’ve screwed up.”
“Funny girl, aren’t you, Ms. Lane?”
“Sure am. Jericho. It’s Mac. I’m Mac. No more fake formality between us. Get with the program or get the hell out of here.”
His dark eyes flared. “Big talk. Ms. Lane. Try to enforce it.” Challenge burned in his gaze.
I sauntered toward him. He watched me coldly and I was reminded of the other night, when I’d pretended to be coming on to him, because I was angry. He thought I was doing it again. I wasn’t. Being in the White Mansion with him was doing something strange to me. Unraveling all my inhibitions, as if these walls had no tolerance for lies, or within them there was no need.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
“
As they rode Tissoyo spoke of the death of all the old people when his father was young, from the sickness that had come with the wagons that were going west. The wagons were all full of men and they were anxious to get to someplace called California. The fever was a malediction that grew and spread and ate people. It was invisible in the plains air but slaughtered whole villages nonetheless. They lay down and died and rotted in their tipis and whoever could walk or get on a horse left them there. Once a small girl lived through the fever in one of those decaying tipis, alone among the dead. She walked out on the empty land and a man called Twisted Horn came upon her but did not know whether she was still inhabited by the hostile, acidic beings, and so he left food and blankets for her, and stayed by her at a distance for days until it was clear she was going to live and that the fever had left her. Then he took her up behind him. Her face was full of holes as if she had been shot with birdshot.
”
”
Paulette Jiles (The Color of Lightning)
“
They got under each of my shoulders and pulled me up, Padma walking in front of me and holding her arms out for good measure. I walked on my own, but I knew that if they hadn’t been there, I might have fallen more than once. Side by side, we marched into the Ocean, all of us crying for help.
What? I felt the swirling waves of Her worry as we floated just beneath the surface.
Something’s wrong with Kahlen, Miaka said.
In the water, they could let me go, and I floated there, the Ocean holding me like a child.
I’m so tired.
Look at her skin, Elizabeth said. She’s so pale. And she keeps sleeping. Like she needs it.
She has a fever, too, Miaka added. I was acutely aware that my temperature was off; I could feel the water around me warming from my touch....She fretted. This has never happened before. I don’t know what to do.
Maybe if she stays in You for a while, it would help, Elizabeth suggested.
What, Miaka? the Ocean asked suddenly.
Nothing. But she did look like she was hiding something.
What were you thinking?
Nothing, Miaka insisted. Flipping through ideas, it’s all nothing. I think Elizabeth is onto something. She swam up to me. We’ll come and check on you every hour until you feel like coming back to bed.
I didn’t want to say how much it bothered me that she said “back to bed” instead of “back to the house.” It was like she knew I wasn’t going to be standing again.
Okay.
They fled, off to make arrangements for their broken sister.
I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening.
How long have you been feeling like this? She sounded uneasy, as if She suspected something She didn’t want to say.
I squinted, trying to remember. It’s been coming on so slowly, it’s hard to say.
She snuggled me into Herself. Just rest. I’m here.
And I was so tired, I did exactly that. It was so unreal, how loved I felt. Right there, balanced with Her rigidity, Her absolute need to maintain order, I heard Her thinking of what She might sacrifice so long as She could keep me. It was such an encompassing feeling, and that alone was enough to make me sleep.
”
”
Kiera Cass (The Siren)
“
Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children, and our sins, lay on the King!
We must bear all. O hard condition,
Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath
Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel
But his own wringing! What infinite heart's ease
Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!
And what have kings that privates have not too,
Save ceremony- save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? What are thy comings-in?
O Ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?
Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd
Than they in fearing.
What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Thinks thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose.
I am a king that find thee; and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced tide running fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world-
No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave
Who, with a body fill'd and vacant mind,
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell;
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Pheebus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse;
And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour, to his grave.
And but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country's peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Henry V)
“
Here are some of the remedios, and what they were used for by the old curanderas.
For calentura (fever), for de sauco (elderberry) flowers were placed in a jar of water, and soaked for twenty-four hours, then strained through a cloth, and the water given to the sick one. This was used either fresh or dry.
Polvos de coyote is like a small tomato bush. In the spring it has a white flower, later a small green berry, which looks like a tiny tomato, about the size of a small marble. In the fall this berry dries up into a pod, and inside this is a grey powder. This powder was blown into the ears to cure sordera (deafness). The reason for its name, polvo de coyote, is that it grows on the mesa, where the coyotes roam.
Yerba de la golondrina (swallow's herb) was used as an inguente (salve). This yerba was picked green and hung up to dry. When dry, it was ground into a powder and mixed with sheep tallow for a salve. It was used for wounds, cuts, and sores. Yerba de la golondrina, or swallow's herb, grows close to the ground and has small round leaves, and looks like a small fern. The reason for the name is that the swallows eat the leaves of this yerba.
Yerba de la golondrina grows only in the southern part of the state.
”
”
Work Projects Administration (Women's Tales from the New Mexico WPA: La Diabla a Pie (Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage))
“
The words and ways this requires are…potent. They come at a price—power always does. This isn’t a matter of wrong or right, you understand, but merely the working of the world. If you want strength, if you want to survive, there must be sacrifice.”
That’s not what Mags taught them. You can tell the wickedness of a witch by the wickedness of her ways. “So who paid your price?”
He bends his neck to look directly at her, weighing something. “A fever spread through my parents’ village that first winter.”
The word fever rings in Juniper’s ears, a distant bell toiling.
“It was nothing too remarkable, except the midwives and wise women couldn’t cure it. One of them came sniffing around, made certain deductions…I took her shadow, too. And the sickness spread further. The villagers grew unruly. Hysterical. I did what I had to do in order to protect myself.” That line has smoothed-over feel, like a polished pebble, as if he’s said it many times to himself. “But then of course the fever spread even further… I didn’t know how to control it, yet. Which kinda of people were expendable and which weren’t. I’m more careful these days.”
The ringing in Juniper’s ears is louder now, deafening.
An uncanny illness, the Three had called it. Juniper remembers the illustrations in Miss Hurston’s moldy schoolbooks, showing abandoned villages and overfull graveyards, carts piled high with bloated bodies. Was that Gideon’s price? Had the entire world paid for the sins of one broken, bitter boy?
And—were they paying again? I’m more careful these days. Juniper thinks of Eve’s labored breathing, the endless rows of cots at Charity Hospital, the fever that raged through the city’s tenements and row houses and dim alleys, preying on the poor and brown and foreign—the expendable. Oh, you bastard.
But Hill doesn’t seem to hear the hitch in her breathing. “People grew frightened, angry. They marched on my village with torches, looking for a villain. So I gave them one.” Hill lifts both hands, palm up: What would you have of me? “I told them a story about an old witch woman who lived in a hut in the roots of an old oak. I told them she spoke with devils and brewed pestilence and death in her cauldron. They believed me.” His voice is perfectly dispassionate, neither guilty nor grieving. “They burned her books and then her. When they left my village I left with them, riding at their head.”
So: the young George of Hyll had broken the world, then pointed his finger at his fellow witches like a little boy caught making a mess. He had survived, at any cost, at every cost. Oh, you absolute damn bastard.
”
”
Alix E. Harrow (The Once and Future Witches)
“
This Compost"
Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.
O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
2
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will
none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.
Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.
”
”
Walt Whitman
“
Theobald Smith, yet another of those forgotten heroes of medical history. Smith, born in 1859, was the son of German immigrants (the family name was Schmitt) in upstate New York and grew up speaking German, so was able to follow and appreciate the experiments of Robert Koch more quickly than most of his American contemporaries. He taught himself Koch’s methods for culturing bacteria and was thus able to isolate salmonella in 1885, long before any other American could do so. Daniel Salmon was head of the Bureau of Animal Husbandry at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was primarily an administrator, but the convention of the day was to list the bureau head as lead author on the department’s papers, and that was the name that got attached to the microbe. Smith was also robbed of credit for the discovery of the infectious protozoa Babesia, which is wrongly named for a Romanian bacteriologist, Victor Babeş. In a long and distinguished career, Smith also did important work on yellow fever, diphtheria, African sleeping sickness, and fecal contamination of drinking water, and showed that tuberculosis in humans and in livestock was caused by different microorganisms, proving Koch wrong on two vital points. Koch also believed that TB could not jump from animals to humans, and Smith showed that that was wrong, too. It was thanks to this discovery that pasteurization of milk became a standard practice. Smith was, in short, the most important American bacteriologist during what was the golden age of bacteriology and yet is almost completely forgotten now.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
“
Long ago,” my aunt had said, “before Providence Cards, the Spirit of the Wood was our divinity. Folk of Blunder sought her out, combing the woods for the smell of salt. They asked her for blessings and gifts. They honored her woods and took the names of the trees as their own. This was old magic—old religion.” Her brow had darkened. “For his reverence, the Spirit of the Wood granted the Shepherd King strange, powerful magic. He wanted to share his magic with his kingdom, and so he made the twelve Providence Cards.” Her voice had grown solemn. “But everything has a price. For each Card, the Shepherd King gave something up to the Spirit of the Wood.” “Like his soul?” Ione had asked, gnawing at her fingernails. My aunt had nodded. “But it was the Spirit of the Wood, in the end, who would pay. With the Shepherd King’s Providence Cards, people had magic at their fingertips. They did not have to go to the wood and beg her blessings. No longer venerated, the Spirit grew vengeful, treacherous.” She’d paused, her lips pursed. “She created the mist, to lure people back to the wood.” I was young. But even then, I’d known to be wary of the mist. “Those who came upon it lost their way, and often their minds,” my mother had said. “The mist spread, isolating us from neighboring kingdoms. Worse, children who tarried in it grew sick with fever, their veins darkening. Those who survived the fever often carried magical gifts like those the Spirit used to bestow, only more unruly—more dangerous.” When her voice shook, she’d held a hand to her throat. “But these children degenerated over time. Some grew twisted in their bodies, others in their minds. Few survived to adulthood.
”
”
Rachel Gillig (One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1))
“
A faint singing seemed to issue from the walls... yes, it was as though the walls themselves were singing!... The song became plainer... the words were now distinguishable... he heard a voice, a very beautiful, very soft, very captivating voice... but, for all its softness, it remained a male voice... The voice came nearer and nearer... it came through the wall... it approached... and now the voice was in the room, in front of Christine. Christine rose and addressed the voice, as though speaking to some one:
"Here I am, Erik," she said. "I am ready. But you are late."
Raoul, peeping from behind the curtain, could not believe his eyes, which showed him nothing. Christine's face lit up. A smile of happiness appeared upon her bloodless lips, a smile like that of sick people when they receive the first hope of recovery.
The voice without a body went on singing; and certainly Raoul had never in his life heard anything more absolutely and heroically sweet, more gloriously insidious, more delicate, more powerful, in short, irresistibly triumphant. He listened to it in a fever and he now began to understand how Christine Daaé was able to appear one evening, before the stupefied audience, with accents of a beauty hitherto unknown, of a superhuman exaltation, while doubtless still under the influence of the mysterious and invisible master.
The voice was singing the Wedding-night Song from Romeo and Juliet. Raoul saw Christine stretch out her arms to the voice as she had done, in Perros church-yard, to the invisible violin playing The Resurrection of Lazarus and nothing could describe the passion with which the voice sang:
"Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!"
The strains went through Raoul's heart.
”
”
Gaston Leroux (Phantom of the Opera)
“
You’re the first people we ever saw without a death,” said the man, whose name, they’d learned, was Peter. “Since we come here, that is. We’re like you, we come here before we was dead, by some chance or accident. We got to wait till our death tells us it’s time.” “Your death tells you?” said Lyra. “Yes. What we found out when we come here, oh, long ago for most of us, we found we all brought our deaths with us. This is where we found out. We had ’em all the time, and we never knew. See, everyone has a death. It goes everywhere with ’em, all their life long, right close by. Our deaths, they’re outside, taking the air; they’ll come in by and by. Granny’s death, he’s there with her, he’s close to her, very close.” “Doesn’t it scare you, having your death close by all the time?” said Lyra. “Why ever would it? If he’s there, you can keep an eye on him. I’d be a lot more nervous not knowing where he was.” “And everyone has their own death?” said Will, marveling. “Why, yes, the moment you’re born, your death comes into the world with you, and it’s your death that takes you out.” “Ah,” said Lyra, “that’s what we need to know, because we’re trying to find the land of the dead, and we don’t know how to get there. Where do we go then, when we die?” “Your death taps you on the shoulder, or takes your hand, and says, ‘Come along o’ me, it’s time.’ It might happen when you’re sick with a fever, or when you choke on a piece of dry bread, or when you fall off a high building; in the middle of your pain and travail, your death comes to you kindly and says, ‘Easy now, easy, child, you come along o’ me,’ and you go with them in a boat out across the lake into the mist. What happens there, no one knows. No one’s ever come back.” The woman told a child to call the deaths in, and he scampered to the door and spoke to them. Will and Lyra watched in wonder, and the Gallivespians drew closer together, as the deaths—one for each of the family—came in through the door: pale, unremarkable figures in shabby clothes, just drab and quiet and dull. “These are your deaths?” said Tialys. “Indeed, sir,” said Peter. “Do you know when they’ll tell you it’s time to go?” “No. But you know they’re close by, and that’s a comfort.
”
”
Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials #3))
“
No,” she croaked, trying to shrink away from him. “You’re not supposed to be here. Don’t come near me; you’ll catch it. Please go—” “Quiet,” Kev said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. He caught Win as she tried to roll away, and settled his hand on her forehead. He felt the burning pulse beneath her fragile skin, the veins lit with raging fever. As Win struggled to push him away, Kev was alarmed by how feeble she had grown. Already. “Don’t,” she sobbed, writhing. Weak tears slid from her eyes. “Please don’t touch me. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you to get sick. Oh, please go. … ” Kev pulled her up against him, her body living flame beneath the thin layer of her nightgown, the pale silk of her hair streaming over both of them. And he cradled her head in one of his hands, the powerful battered hand of a bare-knuckle fighter. “You’re mad,” he said in a low voice, “if you think I would leave you now. I’ll see you safe and well no matter what it takes.” “I won’t live through this,” she whispered. Kev was shocked by the words, and even more by his own reaction to them. “I’m going to die,” she said, “and I won’t take you with me.” Kev gripped her more closely, letting her fitful breaths blow against his face. No matter how she writhed, he wouldn’t let go. He breathed the air from her, taking it deep into his own lungs. “Stop,” she cried, trying desperately to twist away from him. The exertion caused her flush to darken. “This is madness. … Oh, you stubborn wretch, let me go!” “Never.” Kev smoothed her wild, fine hair, the strands darkening where her tears had tracked. “Easy,” he murmured. “Don’t exhaust yourself. Rest.” Win’s struggles slowed as she recognized the futility of resisting him. “You’re so strong,” she said faintly, the words born not of praise, but damnation. “You’re so strong. … ” “Yes,” Kev said, gently using a corner of the bed linens to dry her face. “I’m a brute, and you’ve always known it, haven’t you?” “Yes,” she whispered. “And you’re going to do as I say.” He cradled her against his chest and gave her some water. She took a few painful sips. “Can’t,” she managed, turning her face away. “More,” he insisted, bringing the cup back to her lips. “Let me sleep, please—” “After you drink more.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Seduce Me at Sunrise (The Hathaways, #2))
“
There was a boy at our school. He was the most extraordinary lad I ever came across. I believe he really liked study. He used to get into awful rows for sitting up in bed and reading Greek; and as for French irregular verbs, there was simply no keeping him away from them. He was full of weird and unnatural notions about being a credit to his parents and an honour to the school; and he yearned to win prizes, and grow up and be a clever man, and had all those sort of weak-minded ideas. I never knew such a strange creature, yet harmless, mind you, as the babe unborn.
Well, that boy used to get ill about twice a week, so that he couldn’t go to school. There never was such a boy to get ill. If there was any known disease going within ten miles of him, he had it, and had it badly. He would “take bronchitis in the dog-days, and have hayfever at Christmas. After a six weeks’ period of drought, he would be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and he would go out in a November fog and come home with a sunstroke.
They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drew all his teeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered so terribly with toothache; and then it turned to neuralgia and ear-ache. He was never without a cold, except once for nine weeks while he had scarlet fever; and he always had chilblains.
He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken and custards and hot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob, because they wouldn’t let him do Latin exercises, and took his German grammar away from him.
And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of our school life for the sake of being ill for a day, and had no desire whatever to give our parents any excuse for being stuck-up about us, couldn’t catch so much as a stiff neck. We fooled about in draughts, and it did us good, and freshened us up; and we took things to make us sick, and they made us fat, and gave us an appetite. Nothing we could think of seemed to make us ill until the holidays began. Then, on the breaking-up day, we caught colds, and whooping cough, and all kinds of disorders, which lasted till the term recommenced; when, in spite of everything we could manoeuvre to the contrary, we would get suddenly well again, and be better than ever.
”
”
Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat)
“
Sophie?” He knocked, though not that hard, then decided she wasn’t going hear anything less than a regiment of charging dragoons over Kit’s racket. He pushed the door open to find half of Sophie’s candles lit and the lady pacing the room with Kit in her arms. “He won’t settle,” she said. “He isn’t wet; he isn’t hungry; he isn’t in want of cuddling. I think he’s sickening for something.” Sophie looked to be sickening. Her complexion was pale even by candlelight, her green eyes were underscored by shadows, and her voice held a brittle, anxious quality. “Babies can be colicky.” Vim laid the back of his hand on the child’s forehead. This resulted in a sudden cessation of Kit’s bellowing. “Ah, we have his attention. What ails you, young sir? You’ve woken the watch and disturbed my lady’s sleep.” “Keep talking,” Sophie said softly. “This is the first time he’s quieted in more than an hour.” Vim’s gaze went to the clock on her mantel. It was a quarter past midnight, meaning Sophie had gotten very little rest. “Give him to me, Sophie. Get off your feet, and I’ll have a talk with My Lord Baby.” She looked reluctant but passed the baby over. When the infant started whimpering, Vim began a circuit of the room. “None of your whining, Kit. Father Christmas will hear of it, and you’ll have a bad reputation from your very first Christmas. Do you know Miss Sophie made Christmas bread today? That’s why the house bore such lovely scents—despite your various efforts to put a different fragrance in the air.” He went on like that, speaking softly, rubbing the child’s back and hoping the slight warmth he’d detected was just a matter of the child’s determined upset, not inchoate sickness. Sophie would fret herself into an early grave if the boy stopped thriving. “Listen,” Vim said, speaking very quietly against the baby’s ear. “You are worrying your mama Sophie. You’re too young to start that nonsense, not even old enough to join the navy. Go to sleep, my man. Sooner rather than later.” The child did not go to sleep. He whimpered and whined, and by two in the morning, his nose was running most unattractively. Sophie would not go to sleep either, and Vim would not leave her alone with the baby. “This is my fault,” Sophie said, her gaze following Vim as he made yet another circuit with the child. “I was the one who had to go to the mews, and I should never have taken Kit with me.” “Nonsense. He loved the outing, and you needed the fresh air.” The baby wasn’t even slurping on his fist, which alarmed Vim more than a possible low fever. And that nose… Vim surreptitiously used a hankie to tend to it, but Sophie got to her feet and came toward them. “He’s ill,” she said, frowning at the child. “He misses his mother and I took him out in the middle of a blizzard and now he’s ill.” Vim put his free arm around her, hating the misery in her tone. “He has a runny nose, Sophie. Nobody died of a runny nose.” Her expression went from wan to stricken. “He could die?” She scooted away from Vim. “This is what people mean when they say somebody took a chill, isn’t it? It starts with congestion, then a fever, then he becomes weak and delirious…” “He’s not weak or delirious, Sophie. Calm down.
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Grace Burrowes (Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish (The Duke's Daughters, #1; Windham, #4))