Infection Quotes

In August 1867, a thirteen-year-old142 boy who had severely cut his arm while operating a machine at a fair in Glasgow was admitted to Lister's infirmary. The boy's wound was open and smeared with grime - a setup for gangrene. But rather than amputating the arm, Lister tried a salve of carbolic acid, hoping to keep the arm alive and uninfected. The wound teetered on the edge of a terrifying infection, threatening to become an abscess. But Lister persisted, intensifying his application of carbolic acid paste. For a few weeks, the whole effort seemed hopeless. But then, like a fire running to the end of a rope, the wound began to dry up. A month later, when the poultices were removed, the skin had completely healed underneath. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Some patients do seem to have some kind of post-infection meltdown. They don't still have an infection any more in any sense that we understand infection. But someone is going to have to explain these patients to me someday. ~ Mark Crislip

My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support - which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection - but also by taking active steps to end the baby's life swiftly and humanely ~ Peter Singer

Don't count Jennifer among my mistakes. She had a severe infection and precious little reserve. Nevertheless, I think of her often. Those minutes of terror and confusion I felt standing powerless in her room served as a visceral reminder throughout my training ... that the big picture isn't enough in medicine ... ~ Lisa Sanders

Lips, let sour words go by and language end:
What is amiss plague and infection mend!
Graves only be men's works and death their gain!
Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign. ~ William Shakespeare

Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death. ~ William Osler

It used to be that people went to their doctor to find out what was wrong. That was the expectation when someone made an appointment with their local family doctor: they wanted to know what they had and how they could feel better. Ear infection: what should I take? Pulled muscle: what should I do? Broken ankle: how can you fix it? Over the years, something happened to this common sense approach. "Algorithms" and "pathways" have proliferated in ways that have reduced each person's unique story to simplistic recipes. More often than not, this cookbook approach ends up telling patients what they don't have - which, while potentially reassuring, does not result in a real diagnosis.1 ~ Leana Wen

If there was ever a species that deserved purging from the surface of the planet, it is humanity. We are, or should be, a temporary infestation or infection, a smart virus awaiting its divine antidote. ~ Mal Peet

He started not to answer it, but it was his agent, Mori, and if he didn't answer Mori would worry him like a neurotic puppy with a urinary tract infection needing to go piss in the snow.' (Aiden) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance. ~ Zadie Smith

Most bacteriologists were trained as medical men - Burnet himself had been, before going into bacteriological research - and "their interest in general biological problems was very limited." They cared about curing and preventing diseases, which was well and good; less so about pondering infection as a biological phenomenon, a relationship between creatures, equal in fundamental importance to such other relationships as predation, competition, and decomposition. ~ David Quammen

Filters out bacteria and parasites from the blood and lymph that have been killed by white blood cells. 5) Acts as a reservoir for blood and platelets that can be released when needed (blood loss, infection, hemorrhage, and strenuous exercise). These are released via signals of epinephrine from the adrenals and sympathetics. It has been found that splenic tissue can sometimes regenerate after removal of the spleen. Howard Pearson at Yale University School of Medicine found that 13 of 22 children who had their spleens removed due to trauma had evidence of forming new splenic tissue within 1-8 years. It is hypothesized that a few old spleen cells left behind from the surgery triggered the regeneration. ~ Michael Lebowitz

If one of the people who'd gone Cold drank human blood, the infection mutated. It killed the host and then raised them back up again, Colder than before. Cold through and through, forever and ever. ~ Holly Black

We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable? ~ Steven Pinker

I had a MRSA infection on my ankle. At the time, I had never heard of MRSA. I didn't really know a whole lot about it. It really scared me. ~ Grant Hill

Medicines are unusual commodities. Important drugs can save the lives and protect the health of millions. Their consumption can bring huge benefits, by helping patients to avoid infection and preventing serious damage to the economies of families, nations and even humanity at large. ~ Thomas Pogge

Let me tell you about this leg, Miss Oldridge," he said. "This used to be a modest, well-behaved leg, quietly going about its business, troubling nobody. But ever since it was hurt, it has become tyrannical."

Her expression eased another degree, and amusement glinted in her eyes, like faint, distant stars in a midsummer night's sky.

Encouraged, he went on, "This limb is selfish, surly, and ungrateful. When English medical expertise declared the case hopeless, we took the leg to a Turkish healer. He plied it with exotic unguents and cleaned and dressed it several times a day. By this means he staved off the fatal and malodorous infection it should have suffered otherwise. Was the leg grateful? Did it go back to work like a proper leg? No, it did not."

Lips twitching, she made a sympathetic murmur.

"This limb, madam," he said, "demanded months of boring exercises before it would condescend to perform the simplest movements. Even now, after nearly three years of devoted care and maintenance, it will fly into a fit over damp weather. And this, may I remind you, is an English leg, not one of your delicate foreign varieties. ~ Loretta Chase

If you look at the whole life of the planet, we - you know, Man - has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality. ~ Alex Garland

To study its effect on a living, struggling human body, he meant. To do that, you would need the right combination of hospital facilities, BSL-4 facilities, dedicated and expert professionals, and circumstances. You couldn't do it during the next outbreak at a mission clinic in an African village. You would need to bring Ebola virus into captivity - into a research situation, under highly controlled scrutiny - and not just in the form of frozen samples. You would need to study a raging infection inside somebody's body. That isn't easy to arrange. He added: "We haven't had an Ebola patient yet in the US." But for everything that happens, there is a first time. ~ David Quammen

They're fighting an infection in his leg. Trying to save it - save him. But you saved his life out there in the field, no doubt about that." The praise felt so hollow Ben was surprised the words didn't echo. "He can't die," Ben whispered. "I need to see him." "He'll ~ Annabeth Albert

A bit of pain's just what we need: to cauterize the wound, burn out the infection. ~ Mark Lawrence

Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection. ~ Florence Nightingale

2020 is the year of isolation. ~ Steven Magee

And the connections we have progressively built between human societies not only link old germ pools, but more profoundly they have turned separate groups into a metapopulation for roving killers to explore. The main drama of disease history has been the constant emergence of untried germs from wild hosts, finding human groups linked in ever-larger pacts of mutually assured infection. ~ Kyle Harper

Please don't assault me with that meat amalgam. It would surely cause infection ~ Brandon Mull

The antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties of honey were
revealed as a result of clinical observations and research. Honey
is exceedingly effective in painlessly cleaning up infection and
dead cells in these regions and in the development of new tissues.
The use of honey as a medicine is mentioned in the most ancient
writings. In the present day, doctors and scientists are rediscovering
the effectiveness of honey in the treatment of wounds.
Dr. Peter Molan, a leading researcher into honey for the last 20
years and a professor of biochemistry at New Zealand's University
of Waikato, says this about the antimicrobial properties of honey:
"Randomized trials have shown that honey is more effective in
controlling infection in burn wounds than silver sulphadiazine, the
antibacterial ointment most widely used on burns in hospitals. ~ Harun Yahya

Throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all the huge cities of the world, and by dawn of the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through that silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down. ~ John D. MacDonald

osteomyelitis, a serious bacterial infection of the ~ Nicholas Shakespeare

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts it becomes an epidemic. p901 ~ Wallace Stevens

You must be as thrilled as I am to meet again.Call it an act of extreme kindness that I requested your leg be bandaged up," she snaps. "I want to see you stand for your execution,and I won't have you dying from infection before I'm through with you."
"Thanks.You're very kind. ~ Marie Lu

I've come to hold the human spirit in the highest regard. Like the body, it struggles to repair itself. As cells fight off infection and conquer illness, the spirit, too, has remarkable resilience. It knows when it is harmed, and it knows when the harm is too much to bare. If it deems the injury too great, the spirit cocoons the wound, in the same fashion that the body forms a cyst around infection, until the time comes that it can deal with it. For some people, that time never comes. Some stay fractured, forever broken. You see them on the street, pushing carts. You see them in the faces of the regulars at the bar. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Where no individual in a community is denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no one can tell where or how or when the infection will spread ... ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

For as in nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar person, so in nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have been) better to be discerned from a mob, than in this, - that their feelings are constant and just, results of due contemplation, and of equal thought. You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be - usually are - on a whole, generous and right; but it has no foundation for them, no hold of them; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on; nothing so great but it will forget in an hour, when the fit is past. ~ John Ruskin

Herpes B is a very rare infection in humans but a nasty one, with a case fatality rate of almost 70 percent among those few dozen people infected during the twentieth century (before recent breakthroughs in antiviral pharmaceutics) and almost 50 percent even since then. When ~ David Quammen

With the Gulf spill, I absolutely merged in the time when I had that infection. I couldn't get out of the Gulf spill. There were so many similarities: the drains and the siphoning and the tubes. And also in the way the earth was hurt, the ocean was bleeding. Remember the video cams of the oil gushing? I couldn't stop watching that. ~ Eve Ensler

Rachel hadn't invented the dangers of toxoplasmosis; she'd gone online and built an airtight case. This wasn't crazy talk. Neurobiologists had linked T. gondii to suicide and the onset of schizophrenia. All caused by exposure to cat poop. Some studies even suggested that the toxo brain parasites chemically coerced people to adopt more cats. Those crazy cat ladies were actually being controlled by an infection of single-cell invaders. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

If you get an infection, you get a fever; the fever is your body dealing with the infection. If you get traumatized, your mind and your brain have a reaction to that trauma. If you're not dreaming about it, something's probably wrong. ~ Sebastian Junger

The terrible error in the course of human civilization is undoubtedly the defective judgment that allowed religious authorities usurp the foundation of societal morality, in which all collective ethics of humankind must take a cause. This appalling blunder is comparable only to assigning the leper exclusive franchise to run beauty clinics in the society; this can only lead to cycles upon cycles of common infection syndrome. ~ Adebowale Ojowuro

I can't stop thinking about what Caroline said to Minna about death. It isn't an infection, she said. She might be right. Then again, we've nested in the walls like bacteria. We've taken over the house, its insulation and its plumbing - we've made it our own. Or maybe it's life that's the infection: a feverish dream, a hallucination of feelings. Death is purification, a cleaning, a cure. ~ Lauren Oliver

Without this balance, a body's immune system will not have the desired response when faced with infection. These findings could aid the development and production of vaccines and lead to further research on how the body fights specific infections, such as HIV. ~ Bill Vaughan

The most popular game is Cholesterol Canasta, where the plague patients, vivisection victims, and ambulant biohazard bags try to one-up each other with their hellish blood panels and urine tests. For a long time, the undisputed winner was a two-hundred-and-fifty-kilo diabetic with renal insufficiency, fatty liver disease, and food poisoning. The only infection he didn't have was HIV.. ~ Jutta Profijt

History: *The owner noticed a soft, oozing mass on the head. *Mr. Snooze has been fighting with another cat recently. Assessment: *Mr. Snooze has a low grade fever. *There is an abscess on his head. An abscess is a pocket of pus that forms near an old bite or scratch wound. It is a collection of bacteria, white blood cells, and red blood cells. In other words, an abscess is an infected area under the skin. This abscess is draining. Treatment Plan: *If the abscess was not already draining, the doctor would have to sedate the cat and then surgically get the abscess to drain. If an abscess does not drain, it will be difficult to treat even with a medication. *Mr. Snooze is sent home with an oral antibiotic. This will help the cat fight off the bacteria that are causing the infection. *The owner is instructed to "hot pack" the wound multiple times a day. The ~ Marcy Blesy

We've all been sick; we're all afraid of infection. I think the easiest application to help people understand what quorum sensing is and why it's important to study is to tell them that if we could make the bacteria either deaf or mute, we could create new antibiotics. ~ Bonnie Bassler

Hell! We don't need an infection to exterminate the human race - we'll do it ourselves! ~ Manel Loureiro

When health workers are infected at work, this puts other healthcare workers at risk, but also can be a risk to all other patients, understanding where the breach in these measures is occurring and taking the steps needed to fully implement infection prevention and control measures can put an end to these ... infections. ~ Keiji Fukuda

You dial another college friend, Dr. Saunders, and she picks up almost immediately, 'Hi! Got a shitstorm here, what's up? ~ A.J. Lauer

HIV infection and AIDS is growing - but so too is public apathy. We have already lost too many friends and colleagues. ~ David Geffen

Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility. ~ Mary McCarthy

Basically Ken is a very gentle, home-loving person. I remember when one of his stick insects had a knee infection. He stayed up all night rubbing it with germoline and banging its head on the table. ~ Dave Barry

That's sweet. Nice of you." Johnson put his hands in his pockets. Dove couldn't help but wonder if he was massaging a sore bag of testicles. Dove looked around, and Johnson shuffled his feet. It seemed neither knew what to say, but she hoped neither wanted to part ways either.
Johnson's default was always medical.
"How's your infection?"
Die. Die. Kill me.
"It's ... cleared up ... nicely." Dove twisted her hand into her hair. ~ Debra Anastasia

And if he had returned mutilated, ugly, full of infection and horror, she would still have loved him; fed by pity, by a sharing of pain, she would love him even more, and even more, and she would never, never have prayed to God, please let him die if he can't return to me whole and healthy and able to live a normal life ... If he had died, she would have buried her heart with him. So what the fuck is the matter with me? ~ Tony Kushner

He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few man could be saved in the whole world. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We're very prepared: Infection-control people in hospitals over the past two months have been reviewing all their infection- control procedures because we anticipated just this sort of thing happening-a person coming from West Africa, they were healthy at the time they traveled, but got sick here. ~ William Schaffner

A naturopath once told me you should never take antibiotics except if you have pneumonia, a kidney infection or some other serious illness. That's my philosophy, too. ~ Pamela Sue Martin

Hate is an infection, a disease, that eats away at the good and leaves only evil. ~ R. Francis D'Oliveira

I've never had a sinus infection or been on antibiotics since cutting out dairy. ~ Mayim Bialik

I was a sickly baby, and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home, they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say, the third time's a charm, because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into their home where I was raised in a family full of love. ~ Rodney Atkins

Confederate surgeons usually performed "circular" amputations. They made a 360-degree cut through the skin, then scrunched it up like a shirt cuff. After sawing through the muscle and bone, they inched the skin back down to wrap the stump. This method led to less scarring and infection. Union surgeons preferred "flap" amputations: doctors left two flaps of flesh hanging beside the wound to fold over after they'd sawed through. This method was quicker and provided a more comfortable stump for prosthetics. Altogether, surgeons lopped off 60,000 fingers, toes, hands, feet, and limbs during the war. ~ Sam Kean

I almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection. ~ Dick Dale

Even the small satisfaction of writing letters was denied us. It came to this: not only had the town ceased to be in touch with the rest of the world by normal means of communication, but also - according to a second notification - all correspondence was forbidden, to obviate the risk of letters' carrying infection outside the town. ~ Albert Camus

Is it hard to be with all those men? All day? Every day?"
Annwyl drank some of Morfyd's wine. She knew no threat of infection remained, but the wine still tasted unbelievably delicious.
"Not at all."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. Just let one of the men touch you inappropriately and you take his arm off right at the shoulder joint. Then, as he's bleeding to death, you slam his face into a few things, and you'll find the other men leave you alone."
Morfyd stared at Annwyl with wide eyes. "What?"
Morfyd cleared her throat. "Nothing. ~ G.A. Aiken

The idea behind a stool transplant is to "reseed the lawn," so to speak. After exposure to weeks or months of antibiotics (including Vanco) the normal bowel flora - the organisms in your colon that help prevent infection - is weakened. They simply can't keep C. diff out. In other words, the normal barrier function of the colonic flora is gone, and C. diff gets right back in. So putting in some normal flora from a healthy donor is like reseeding the lawn - it restores the barrier. When that happens, C. diff cannot get back in, and the infection is cured. ~ J. Thomas LaMont

I needed him here like I needed a yeast infection. ~ Kathy Reichs

My office door slams open, leaving a dent in the drywall.
Here we go.
"You are driving me crazy!"
Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing's fast, and she's got murder in her eyes.
Beautiful.
I raise my brows hopefully. "Crazy? Like you want to rip my shirt open again?"
"No. Crazy like the itch of a yeast infection that just won't go away."
I flinch. Can't help it.
I mean - Christ. ~ Emma Chase

I am the scalpel that cuts out infection, and the heartbreak that makes men wiser. ~ Simon R. Green

Whenever I close my eyes, I see her. Scarlet. I see her smiling. I see her crying. I hear her laughter flowing through me, sending chills down my spine. The sound of her moaning creeps through my bloodstream, the face she makes in the throes of passion the pulse that spurs it on. Whatever this is I'm feeling, I want it to stop. I want it to go away. I want to stop fucking seeing her every time I blink. I want to stop fucking thinking about her every time I pause to take a deep breath. She's like an infection that's settling into my chest. I would rip out my own organs if I thought it might purge her from my system. ~ J.M. Darhower

We were beginning to see that the medical profession, at the time still over 90 percent male, had transformed childbirth from a natural event into a surgical operation performed on an unconscious patient in what approximated a sterile environment. Routinely, the woman about to give birth was subjected to an enema, had her pubic hair shaved off, and was placed in the lithotomy position - on her back, with knees up and crotch spread wide open. As the baby began to emerge, the obstetrician performed an episiotomy, a surgical enlargement of the vaginal opening, which had to be stitched back together after birth. Each of these procedures came with a medical rationale: The enema was to prevent contamination with feces; the pubic hair was shaved because it might be unclean; the episiotomy was meant to ease the baby's exit. But each of these was also painful, both physically and otherwise, and some came with their own risks, Shaving produces small cuts and abrasions that are open to infection; episiotomy scars heal m ore slowly than natural tears and can make it difficult for the woman to walk or relieve herself for weeks afterward. The lithotomy position may be more congenial for the physician than kneeling before a sitting woman, but it impedes the baby's process through the birth canal and can lead to tailbone injuries in the mother. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

He'd left a new nightmare behind him, like an infection in a sore - the insult after the injury. ~ Stephenie Meyer

This is the moment I have dreaded, the very reason why we kept running, even when it seemed hopeless. We all seemed to believe if we kept running, we would never die. But what exactly had we been hoping to find in the end? A magical place where the infection hadn't spread? A castle surrounded by gumdrops and cotton candy? ~ Jen Naumann

I have caught more ills from people sneezing over me and giving me virus infections than from kissing dogs. ~ Barbara Woodhouse

There is nothing like the cure of fresh air for cases of bladder infection, paranoia, and Cartesian thinking. ~ Rawi Hage

One of the most popular genital surgeries is labia minora reduction. When a similar procedure is performed on healthy girls in some African countries as a coming-of-age rite to control their sexuality, Westerners denounce it as genital mutilation; in the U.S. of A., it's called cosmetic enhancement. But both procedures are based on misogynist notions of female genitalia as ugly, dirty, and shameful. And though American procedures are generally performed under vastly better conditions (with the benefit of, say, anesthesia and antibiotics), the postsurgical results can be similarly horrific, involving loss of sensation, chronic pain, and infection. ~ Julia Scheeres

We're [Clinton Foundation] trying to get rapid tests that give you results when you're right there on site at an affordable price. Ninety percent of the HIV-positive people in the world don't know they have the infection. An enormous amount of infections are being perpetrated by people who don't know they themselves are HIV positive. ~ William J. Clinton

In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300 percent mortality. ~ Sam Kean

Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body's extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to internal organs.
Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases! ~ Patch Adams

[referencing African girls with no medical care while giving birth and the devastating fistulas they are left with untreated] Instead of receiving treatment, these young girls--often just girls of fifteen or sixteen--typically find their lives effectively over. They are divorced from their husbands and, because they emit a terrible odor from their wastes, are often forced to live in a hut by themselves on the edge of the village. Eventually, they starve to death or die of an infection that progresses along the birth canal. The fistula patient is the modern-day leper," notes Ruth Kennedy, a British nurse-midwife. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

They never said it, Ramzan never thanked him for it, but they both knew that the week he spent treating the infection was just that. If a stranger were to put his ear in the space between them, he would hear the dull roar of that knowledge. ~ Anthony Marra

Thanks to evolution, our bodies have powerful ways to ward off illness and infection and enable us to live long and healthy lives. Why, then, do health costs continue to climb at unsustainable and frightening rates? ~ David Suzuki

Each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And i know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breath in someone's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, purity (if you like) – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. ~ Albert Camus

The downside was that hospital staff took the first big blasts of secondary infection; the upside was that those blasts generally weren't emitted by people still feeling healthy enough to ride a bus or a subway to work. This was an enormously consequential factor in the SARS episode - ~ David Quammen

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man - his courage and hope, or lack of them - and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend's death was that the expected liberation did not come and he was severely disappointed. This suddenly lowered his body's resistance against the latent typhus infection. His faith in the future and his will to live had become paralyzed and his body fell victim to illness - and thus the voice of his dream was right after all. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

There is a striking parallel between the spreading of germs and the spreading of ideas or propaganda. On the one hand we are dealing with a virus which can be transported and transmitted under certain conditions which favor or limit its transportation or transmission: on the other hand with ideas, religions, and doctrines, which can be described as germs, benevolent or malevolent, according to the point of view one takes up. These germs can either remain at their source and be sterile, or emerge in the spreading of infection. ~ Andre Siegfried

And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial? The first step toward evil, toward desire and death, was taken precisely then, when there took place that first increase in the density of the spiritual, that pathologically luxuriant morbid growth, produced by the irritant of some unknown infiltration; this, in part pleasurable, in part a motion of self-defense, was the primeval stage of matter, the transition from the insubstantial to the substance. This was the Fall. ~ Thomas Mann

Lepers were a common sight all over India and in every part of Calcutta, but extending help beyond dropping a coin or two into their rag-wrapped stumps was not. As a child I was convinced even touching a spot a leper had rubbed against would lead to infection. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

The unchosen thing is what causes the trouble. If you don't do something with the unchosen, it will set up a minor infection somewhere in the unconscious and later take its revenge on you. Unlived life does not just "go away"... ~ Robert A. Johnson

The zombie threat is made worse by the fact that their victims then turn into the creature that attacked them. This too is similar to other monsters (werewolves and vampires) and also similar to the sub-genre of infection/plague films. In the case of zombies, however, this may carry a greater sense of dread and revulsion: vampires and werewolves can be seen as desirable, potent, intelligent, virile creatures whom one might like
in some way at least
to become; a mindless ghoul condemned to wander aimlessly across an empty, ruined earth seems much less attractive. ~ Kim Paffenroth

Just as the body takes time to recover from an infection that has afflicted it, so the soul needs times of silence and solitude for its recovery from the insane pace of modern life. ~ Howard Baker

I tried phone sex - it gave me an ear infection ... ~ Richard Lewis

Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risks of infection. ~ Richard Von Weizsaecker

He's going to pack it with wet, sterile gauze instead," Verex explained. "It will heal slowly, from the inside out." The prince's voice was strong and sure. He was turning the grim words of the physician into something hopeful. "Really, that's the best way to avoid infection, because the wound can be cleaned out daily."
The physician gave him a sidelong look. "I'm not sure I need the commentary." But Kestrel did, and Verex knew that she did. ~ Marie Rutkoski

We were told in one lecture that it was possible to immunize against diphtheria and tetanus by the use of chemically treated toxins, or toxoids. And the following lecture, we were told that
for immunization against a virus disease, you have to experience the infection, and that you could not induce immunity with the so-called "killed" or inactivated, chemically treated virus preparation. Well, somehow, that struck me. What struck me was that both statements couldn't be true. And I asked why this was so, and the answer that was given was in a sense, 'Because.'
There was no satisfactory answer. ~ Jonas Salk

Many people - many nations - can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that 'every stranger is an enemy'. For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection; it betrays itself only in random, disconnected acts, and does not lie at the base of a system of reason. ~ Primo Levi

Guilt cannot, in fact, express itself, except in the indirect language of "captivity" and "infection," inherited from the two prior stages. Thus both symbols are transposed "inward" to express a freedom that enslaves itself, affects itself, and infects itself by its own choice. Conversely, the symbolic and non-literal character of the captivity of sin and the infection of defilement becomes quite clear when these symbols are used to denote a dimension of freedom itself; then and only then do we know that they are symbols, when they reveal a situation that is centered in the relation of oneself to oneself. Why this recourse to the prior symbolism? Because the paradox of a captive free will - the paradox of a servile will - is insupportable for thought. That freedom must be delivered and that this deliverance is deliverance from self-enslavement cannot be said directly; yet it is the central theme of "salvation ~ Paul Ricoeur

The demons, they return to haunt the crimp in my heart. No amount of burning herbs, or magic spells and bitter potions cast the beasts away. Garlic rosaries won't
remove the black infection slowly devouring within.
Only love, perfect love, casts out the monsters and the fiends that invade like a thief in the night infecting and destroying, attempting to steal my joy. But love is life and I choose life. I choose love. Throw away the herbs, release the spells, let me swallow love's divinity. ~ Melody Lee

Souls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love ... prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude ... all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul's innate desire for malignancy. ~ J.R. Ward

My body
Healed quickly. But the wound
to my psyche was deep.
Wide. First aid, too little, too late,
left me hemorrhaging inside,
the blood unstaunched by psychological
bandage or love's healing magic.
Eventually it scabbed over,
a thick, ugly welt of memory.
I work to conceal it, but no matter
how hard I try, once in a while
something makes me pick at it
until the scarring bleeds.
In my arms, Ashante cries,
innocence ripped apart
by circumstance. Bloodied by
inhuman will. Time will prove
a tourniquet. But she will always
be at risk of infection. (124) ~ Ellen Hopkins

I believe, for instance, that love is an infection best contracted and got over when one is young, like the smallpox; and then one may rest secure from it and get on with life ~ Jude Morgan

You carry too much hope, and it will canker in your soul like an infection. ~ Kiersten White

As I sat in the hot, salty water, I thought, 'No wonder Mr. Bubble always gives me a urinary tract infection and hives.' Mr. Bubble was for common people. Mr. Bubble was for my so-called brother, their true child. I was a Vanderbilt. I should bathe in condiments and seasonings. ~ Augusten Burroughs

I finally demonstrated that typhus infection is not hereditary in the louse. ~ Charles Jules Henry Nicole