My Virtual Reading Room

"It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm"
(1859)
[spotted at the bottom of the surgical ICU's goal sheet]

“It did strike me as odd, sometimes, that we should pray to be delivered ‘from plague, pestilence, and famine,’ when all the common sewers ran into the Thames, and fevers haunted undrained land, and the districts which cholera would visit could be pointed out. I thought that cholera came that we might remove these causes, not pray that God would remove the cholera.”
(Suggestions for Thought, 1860)