This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Perhaps more than any other single factor, the intimate alchemy between the healer and the patient helps mobilize the body's natural resources. The mere presence of a healer often evokes hope in the patient and an expectation of recovery. When the two people create a partnership based on compassion, trust, and shared decision-making, and when the relationship nurtures the patient's hope for a positive outcome, even seemingly incurable diseases sometimes go into remission.... insistently restoring the human heart to the practice of medicine. Rather than treating patients as disease processes, they risk bringing their full humanness to the therapeutic encounter. They not only call on their technological expertise, but on the inner qualities practiced by healers from time immemorial: patience, humility, compassion, and an ability to inspire and mobilize their patients' healing resources.
Ability | Alchemy | Body | Compassion | Decision | Disease | Expectation | Heart | Hope | Humility | Patience | People | Practice | Qualities | Relationship | Risk | Time | Trust | Expectation |
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy, that gives indolence of body with an equality of mind; the best guardian of youth and support of old age; the precept of reason as well as religion, and physician of the soul as well as the body; the tutelary goddess of health and universal medicine of life.
Age | Body | Envy | Equality | Fortune | Health | Indolence | Life | Life | Mind | Old age | Precept | Pride | Reason | Religion | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Youth | Youth | Old |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
The failure of the mind in old age is often less the results of natural decay, than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment bring indolence, and indolence decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy.
Age | Ambition | Contentment | Death | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Indolence | Men | Mind | Old age | Power | Ambition | Failure | Old |
Solomon, fully King Solomon, aka Jedidiah NULL
There is no wealth greater than the health of the body, there is no joy greater than the joy of the heart... A cheerful heart causes man's life to blossom, while the spirit of sadness dries the bones. Never rejoice at other people's misfortunes, for you cannot know when adversity may come to you.
Adversity | Body | Health | Heart | Joy | Life | Life | Man | People | Sadness | Spirit | Wealth |
We observe with confidence that the truly strong mind, view it as intellect or morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; that here the sign of health is unconsciousness.
Confidence | Health | Mind | Morality | Strength | Unconsciousness | Intellect |
A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
We need harmony, we need peace. Peace is based on respect for life, the spirit of reverence for life. Not only do we have to respect the lives of human beings, but we have to respect the lives of animals, vegetables, and minerals. Rocks can be alive. A rock can be destroyed. The earth also. The destruction of our health by pollution of the air and water is linked to the destruction of the minerals. The way we farm, the way we deal with our garbage, all these things are related to each other.
Earth | Harmony | Health | Life | Life | Need | Peace | Respect | Reverence | Spirit | Respect |
Learning hath gained most by those books by which printers have lost.
Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. To much overcharges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. It is thought, and digestion which makes books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind.
Books | Disease | Health | Mind | Nature | Reading | Thought |
Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
The safety of morality lies neither in the adoption of this or that philosophical speculation, or this or that theological creed, but in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social disorganization upon the track of immorality, as surely as its sends physical disease after physical trespasses.
Belief | Creed | Disease | Morality | Nature | Order | Speculation |
He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.
Art | Books | Capacity | Choice | Greatness | Human nature | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Necessity | Philosophy | Politics | Strength | Weakness | World |
The soul is more interested in particulars than in generalities. That is true of personal identity as well. Identifying with a group or a syndrome or a diagnosis is giving in to an abstraction. Soul provides a strong sense of individuality - personal destiny, special influences and background, and unique stories. In the face of overwhelming need for both emergency and chronic care, the mental health system labels people schizophrenics, alcoholics, and survivors so that it can bring some order to the chaos of life at home and on the street, but each person has a special story to tell, no matter how many common themes it contains.
Care | Destiny | Giving | Health | Individuality | Life | Life | Need | Order | People | Sense | Soul | Story | System | Unique |
Ashley Montagu, fully Montague Francis Ashley Montagu, born Israel Ehrenberg
The [doctor] has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease.