Anatomy of an Illness Quotes

“Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient - Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate -- even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth." Norman Cousins (in his; Anatomy of an Illness)”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient

“Some people don't really know enough to make a pronouncement of doom on a human being.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient - Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“If ignorance about the nature of pain is widespread, ignorance about the way pain-killing drugs is even more so. What is not generally understood is that many of the vaunted pain-killing drugs conceal the pain without correcting the underlying condition. They deaden the mechanism in the body that alerts the brain to the fact that something may be wrong. The body can pay a high price for suppression of pain without regard to its basic cause.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient

“Suppose I stopped taking aspirin and phenylbutazone? What about the pain? The bones in my spine and practically every joint in my body felt as though I had been run over by a truck.
I knew that pain could be affected by attitudes. Most people become panicky about almost any pain. On all sides they have been so bombarded with advertisements about pain that they take this or that analgesic at the slightest sign of an ache. We are largely illiterate about pain and so are seldom able to deal with it rationally. Pain is part of the body's magic. It is the way the body transmits a sign to the body that something is wrong.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient

“Illness is always an interaction between [mind and body]. It can begin in the mind and affect the body, or it can begin in the body and affect the mind, both of which are served by the same bloodstream. Attempts to treat most mental diseases as though they were completely free of physical causes and attempts to treat most bodily diseases as though the mind were in no way involved must be considered archaic in the light of new evidence about the way the human body functions.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient

“Time is the one thing that patients need most from their doctors--time to be heard, time to have things explained, time to reassured, time to be introduced by the doctor personally to specialists or other attendants whose very existence seems to reflect something new and threatening. yet the one thing that too many doctors find most difficult to command or manage is time.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient

“A man can do something for peace without having to jump into politics. Each man has inside him a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a man to listen to his own goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be ourselves? This is the question that counts.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“But enough research has been done to indicate that those individuals with determination to overcome an illness tend to have a greater tolerance to severe pain than those who are morbidly apprehensive.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“It takes courage for a man to listen to his own goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be ourselves? This is the question that counts.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“that a highly developed purpose and the will to live are among the prime raw materials of human existence. I became convinced that these materials may well represent the most potent force within human reach.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“In extreme form, stress can cause symptoms of conversion hysteria—a malaise described by Jean Charcot, Freud’s teacher.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“Placebos,” Dr. Shapiro has written in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, “can have profound effects on organic illness, including incurable malignancies.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“No wonder the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health made the melancholy observation that a great failure of medical schools is that they pay so little attention to the science of nutrition.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“Living in the second half of the twentieth century, I realized, confers no automatic protection against unwise or even dangerous drugs and methods. Each age has had to undergo its own special nostrums. (Chapter 1)”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient

“had ceremonial”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“would”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration

“Death is not the ultimate tragedy of life. The ultimate tragedy is depersonalization—dying in an alien and sterile area, separated from the spiritual nourishment that comes from being able to reach out to a loving hand, separated from the desire to experience the things that make life worth living, separated from hope.”
― Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient