Health

"Murder by Proxy.-“There is at the present time, a kind of infanticide, which, although it is not so well known, is even more dangerous, because done with impunity. There are parents who recoil with horror at the idea of destroying their offspring, although they would greatly desire to be disembarrassed of them, who yet place them without remorse with nurses who enjoy the sinister reputation of never returning the children to those who have untrusted them to their care. These unfortunate little beings are condemned to perish from inanition and bad treatment. “The number of these innocent victims is greater than would be imagined, and very certainly exceeds that of the marked infanticides sent by the public prosecutor to the Court of the Assizes.”"

"Bound by paperwork, short on hands, sleep, and energy... nurses are rarely short on caring."

"When I got really sick at the age of 21, I had my first experience of limit, of pain and loneliness. It changed the way I saw life. For months, I didn’t know who I was or whether I would live or die. The doctors had no idea whether I’d make it either. I remember hugging my mother and saying, “Just tell me if I’m going to die.” I was in the second year of training for the priesthood in the diocesan seminary of Buenos Aires. I remember the date: Aug. 13, 1957. I got taken to a hospital by a prefect who realized mine was not the kind of flu you treat with aspirin. Straightaway they took a liter and a half of water out of my lungs, and I remained there fighting for my life. The following November they operated to take out the upper right lobe of one of the lungs. I have some sense of how people with Covid-19 feel as they struggle to breathe on a ventilator. I remember especially two nurses from this time. One was the senior ward matron, a Dominican sister who had been a teacher in Athens before being sent to Buenos Aires. I learned later that following the first examination by the doctor, after he left she told the nurses to double the dose of medication he had prescribed — basically penicillin and streptomycin — because she knew from experience I was dying. Sister Cornelia Caraglio saved my life. Because of her regular contact with sick people, she understood better than the doctor what they needed, and she had the courage to act on her knowledge. Another nurse, Micaela, did the same when I was in intense pain, secretly prescribing me extra doses of painkillers outside my due times. Cornelia and Micaela are in heaven now, but I’ll always owe them so much. They fought for me to the end, until my eventual recovery. They taught me what it is to use science but also to know when to go beyond it to meet particular needs. And the serious illness I lived through taught me to depend on the goodness and wisdom of others."

"In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do."

"If you are at all familiar with the dominant vocabulary of American bioethics, you are undoubtedly aware that it is an ethics based on principles, most notably the principles of autonomy, beneficence, justice and nonmaleficence People involved in health care, especially physicians and nurses, are expected to observe rules and rights derived from these general principles to determine what they are morally obliged to do in particular situations. If the principles clash, as they often do, then they must be balanced against each other to determine which one obliged or they must be adjusted to preserve coherence in the system. In the minds of many, making moral decisions and judgments in health care ethics remains a process of guiding our actions in accord with the obligations and rights established by the general principles and the more specific rules derived from them."

"Likewise we hold in the highest esteem those doctors and members of the nursing profession who, in the exercise of their calling, endeavor to fulfill the demands of their Christian vocation before any merely human interest. Let them therefore continue constant in their resolution always to support those lines of action which accord with faith and with right reason. And let them strive to win agreement and support for these policies among their professional colleagues. Moreover, they should regard it as an essential part of their skill to make themselves fully proficient in this difficult field of medical knowledge. For then, when married couples ask for their advice, they may be in a position to give them right counsel and to point them in the proper direction. Married couples have a right to expect this much from them."

"A hero is someone who happened to be in the right circumstances and took the action of great humanity. A nurse is someone who took the action of great humanity and chose to be in the right circumstances."

"Save one life... and you are a hero. Save one hundred lives... and you are a nurse."

"It is as impossible in a book to teach a person in charge of sick how to manage, as it is to teach her how to nurse. Circumstances must vary with each different case. But it is possible to press upon her to think for herself."

"No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this — "devoted and obedient." This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman."

"I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet—all at the least expense of vital power to the patient."

"By the early 1890s nurses had begun seriously to discuss ethical issues in nursing. In 1899 the International Council of Nurses was established, professional journals, such as “The American Journal of Nursing”, sprang up and in 1901 Isabel Hampton Robb, a leader of nursing at the time, wrote one of the first books on nursing ethics, entitled Nursing Ethics for Hospitals and Private Use(Robb 1901). The vast majority of nurses are women and, until fairly recently, the vast majority of doctors have been men. Not surprisingly, the relationship between doctors and nurses reflected the different roles of women and men, and their relative status in society. One of the manifestations of this was the assumption that the primary responsibility of nurses was to doctors rather than to patients, and that nurses had to show absolute obedience to their medical colleagues. As one American nursing leader put it in 1917: “The first and most helpful criticism I ever received from a doctor was when he told me that I was supposed to be simply an intelligent machine for the purpose of carrying out his order”(Dock 1917: 394). The view that the nurse’s primary responsibility was to the doctor prevailed until the 1960s, and was still reflected in the 1965 version of the International Code of Nursing Ethics. Item 7 of the Code states: “The nurse is under an obligation to carry out the physician’s orders intelligently and loyally.” The revival of feminist thinking in the late 1960s paralleled the developing self-consciousness and self-assertiveness of nurses, and in the 1973 International Council of Nurses’ Code for Nurses, the nurse’s “primary responsibility” is no longer seen to be to doctors but to patients – “to those people who require nursing care.” This questioning by nurses of their traditional role and their relationship with doctors and patients eventually converged with a movement by feminist philosophers that challenged the traditional (and therefore male-dominated) view of ethics as a matter of abstract, impartial, and universal principles or rules. Instead of this conception of ethics, feminist philosophers like Nel Noddings (1984) conceived of ethics as a fabric of care and responsibility arising out of personal relationships. Building on this“female” approach to ethics, both philosophers and nurses sought to construct a new ethics for nurses based on the concept of care. Jean Watson, a nurse and a prominent proponent of a nursing ethics of care, applies to the nursing situation Noddings’s view that an ethics of care “ties us to the people we serve and not to the rules through which we serve them” (Watson 1988: 2)."

"Wicked Nurses.-In those cases in which the habit is acquired at a very early age, the work of evil is usually wrought by the nurse, perhaps through ignorance of the effects of the habit. Incredible as it seems, it is proved by numerous instances that it is not an uncommon habit for nurses to quiet small children by handling or titillating their genital organs. They find this is a speedy means of quieting them, and resort to it regardless or ignorant of the consequences. Not an Uncommon Case.-Prof Lusk of Bellevue Hospital College, New York, related to his medical class in our hearing a case which came under his observation in which all of the children in a large family had been taught the habit by a wicked nurse for the purpose of keeping them quiet after they were put to bed. The vileness that would lead a person to thus rob childhood of its innocence, and blast its prospects for this life and the next, is base enough for the commission of almost any-crime. Indeed, the crime could hardly have been a worse one had the nurse referred to in the above case in cold blood cut the throats of those innocent children ; perhaps it might have been better for the children."

"It is needless to recapitulate all the causes of unchastity which have previously been quite fully dwelt upon, nearly all of which are predisposing or exciting causes of solitary as well as of social vice. Sexual precocity, idleness, pernicious literature, abnormal sexual passions, exciting and irritating food, glutton, sedentary employment, libidinous pictures, and many abnormal conditions of life, are potent causes in exciting the vile practice; but by far the most frequent causes are evil associations, wicked or ignorant nurses, and local disease, or abnormality. These latter we will consider more particularly, as they have not been so fully dwelt upon elsewhere."

"Vomiting is not a deal breaker. If Hitler had vomited on Chamberlain, Chamberlain still would have given him Czechoslovakia."

"Good painters imitate nature, bad ones vomit it."

"You know in some cultures, they only eat vomit. I never been there before, but I read about it...in a book!"

"You may find this hard to believe, but it's the best thing I've ever thrown up."

"What about orange juice and milk? What's the upchuck factor on that?"

"As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly."

"A common experience... is for a person who has some ocular trouble that impairs his vision to become suddenly aware of the so-called mouches volantes in his visual field, although the causes of this phenomenon have been there in the vitreous humour all his life. Yet now he will be firmly persuaded that these corpuscles have developed as the result of his ocular ailment, although the truth simply is that, owing to his ailment, the patient has been paying more attention to visual phenomena."""

"At first the amoebae look like muscae volitantes, those curled moving spots you seem to see in your eyes when you stare at a distant wall. Then I see the amoebae as drops of water congealed, blusish, translucent, like chips of sky in the bowl."

"When the eye has imperfect sight the mind not only distorts what the eye sees, but it imagines that it sees things that do not exist. Among illusions of this sort are the floating specks which so often appear before the eyes when the sight is imperfect, and even when it is ordinarily very good. These specks are known scientifically as "muscæ volitantes," or "flying flies," and although they are of no real importance, being symptoms of nothing except mental strain, they have attracted so much attention."

"They could have done the same thing, alone, in the back yard, seeing the shapes swimming in the sky. I forget how old I was when I asked somebody about it, and I was told that those wonderful gliding changing spots were imperfections in the fluid of my eye-ball, that what I was seeing was in my eye. In your eye! For so long, for a child's years, the sky was full of wonder, these shapes were in the sky, the sky was full of transparent things that swooped and swam. They were almost invisible, and, I thought, almost bodiless, they were there, but you could go right through them, they were animals that lived in the air. You see, we didn't go around talking about things like this. It's only now, when I am grown up and know everything, that I talk about this."

"Oh, squiggly line in my eye fluid. I see you there lurking on the periphery of my vision. But when I try to look at you, you scurry away. Are you shy, squiggly line? Why only when I ignore you, do you return to the center of my eye? Oh, squiggly line, it's alright, you are forgiven."

"[T]he only lawful method of avoiding parenthood is abstinence, either total or periodic. Every intelligent person will see how different is this type of 'birth control' – if one wishes to call it such – from the use of a contraceptive. One is the non-use of a faculty, the other is its abuse."

"And let those who cannot find a match keep chaste till Allah give them independence by His grace. And such of your slaves as seek a writing (of emancipation), write it for them if ye are aware of aught of good in them, and bestow upon them of the wealth of Allah which He hath bestowed upon you. Force not your slave-girls to whoredom that ye may seek enjoyment of the life of the world, if they would preserve their chastity. And if one force them, then (unto them), after their compulsion, lo! Allah will be Forgiving, Merciful."

"I asked of him an evil act, but he proved continent."

"Whoso (of the guardians) is rich, let him abstain generously (from taking of the property of orphans); and whoso is poor let him take thereof in reason (for his guardianship)."

"Those who forswear their wives must wait four months; then, if they change their mind, lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."

"Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire."

"Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;"

"Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge."

"Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart."

"Abstain from all appearance of evil."

"For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;"

"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:"

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."

"And lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed."

"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."

"Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband."

"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"

"Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body."

"Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying."

"All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."

"And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands.And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel,That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year."

"Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised."

"And it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her.But he refused, and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand;There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?And it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her."

"The moon, methinks, looks with a wat’ry eye, And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforcèd chastity."

"Usez, n'abusez point […] L'abstinence ou l'excès ne fit jamais d'heureux."