Showing 671 - 680 of 680 annotations tagged with the keyword "Disease and Health"

Of Experience

Montaigne, Michel de

Last Updated: Oct-17-1996
Annotated by:
Willms, Janice

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

In Montaigne's final essay he expounds upon the results of his long search for self knowledge via life experience. He uses disease, health, medicine and doctors as prime arenas for demonstration of what he has learned from living. On physicians: to be a "right" physician, one must have experienced every illness, accident or mishap one seeks to treat. On going to stool: to have a right bowel movement, one must have peace, quiet, punctuality and privacy to avoid unruliness of the belly. On treatment: "I hate remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself." On the most preferable ailments: here the essayist writes of the advantages of stone: that is, the agony always ends, the disease does not portend death or worse, the sufferer spends more time feeling well than hurting, and it has political advantages for allowing a show of stoicism. And there is more.

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Miss Gee

Auden, W.

Last Updated: Sep-26-1996
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Miss Gee wants to be a good girl and keep "her clothes buttoned up to her neck." Time goes by. Finally, she gets on her bicycle and goes to the doctor about "a pain inside me." The doctor diagnoses cancer. Later, over dinner, he comments to his wife that "cancer's a funny thing" that attacks "childless women" and "men when they retire."

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The Waiting Room

Jones, Richard

Last Updated: Aug-13-1996
Annotated by:
Stanford, Ann Folwell

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker evokes the isolation and boredom of the sick as they sit in a waiting room, "pretending to read." The poem comments on the mystery of life and death and the patient's need for the physician to bring healing, hope. As people sit in the waiting room, the speaker thinks about their isolation and wonders what they might be thinking (a man who is "wondering what disease / is buried in his body/ like a treasure"). The darkness of the afternoon is dispelled by a nurse turning on a lamp, "but the examining room is dark / as the doctor's eyes, hidden / behind the strongly focused beam / shooting out from the silver circle, / . . . coming / out the center of his head."

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The Remedy

Jones, Richard

Last Updated: Jul-09-1996
Annotated by:
Stanford, Ann Folwell

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker of this long poem is recovering from seven weeks of pneumonia, during which time he has been completely bedridden. On the day of the poem, he has just arisen and makes preparations to cook a pot of tomato soup with herbs and vegetables from his (now overgrown) garden. The poem describes the beginning of the day when the speaker gathers the food from the garden, later in the day when he applies various natural remedies, and the evening when he finally drinks the soup.

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An Early Afterlife

Pastan, Linda

Last Updated: May-21-1996
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

In Linda Pastan's poem from her latest collection of the same name, the narrator proposes to prepare for the parting that comes with death while "in the fallacy of perfect health . . . ." Now, while there is time, dear ones could behave toward each other with all the loving tenderness befitting a preparation for permanent loss. Then the "ragged things that are coming next . . . would be like postscripts . . . Nothing could touch us."

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In the Land of the Body

Bloch, Chana

Last Updated: Nov-16-1995
Annotated by:
McEntyre, Marilyn

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poems (Sequence)

Summary:

Chana Bloch's series of eight cancer poems, collectively entitled “In the Land of the Body,” focuses on the experience of ovarian cancer, from diagnosis to surgery and beyond. The poems provide a loose narrative of illness and treatment, but each of them represents a slightly different approach to the inner life of illness. They are episodic; several evoke scenes--in the doctor's office before the X-ray machine, at home, watching her children color, in the hospital before surgery, and finally out of doors among the pines, released as “cured,” reveling in the qualified hope that they got it all.

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Up-Hill

Rossetti, Christina

Last Updated: Aug-08-1994
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The poem is an exchange of questions and answers that compares life to a journey. The journey is up-hill all the way, but at the end is an inn, a resting place, that cannot be missed and which has a room for everyone.

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Cold Head, Cold Heart

Piercy, Marge

Last Updated: Aug-05-1994
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This is a comic poem in which the narrator describes the experience of having a head cold.

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After the Second Operation

Goedicke, Patricia

Last Updated: Aug-01-1993
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This poem describes the perceptions of a patient upon being released from the hospital following surgery. Although she states that "it is ridiculous / standing here on one foot," there is much excitement and wonder in her outlook: "each step / newness pierces the heart."

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Tears

Van Duyn, Mona

Last Updated: Aug-01-1993
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A patient suffers a mysterious eye ailment that baffles the doctors. Yet suddenly, the affliction resolves, and the patient describes the simple joys of tears and what they symbolize. The mood is shattered as the patient discovers that despite all the "mercy' that tears bring, they can also be deadly, as an "AIDS-related virus" is discovered in tears.

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