# Disease

A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not due to any immediate external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that are associated with specific signs and symptoms. A disease may be caused by external factors such as pathogens or by internal dysfunctions. For example, internal dysfunctions of the immune system can produce a variety of different diseases, including various forms of immunodeficiency, hypersensitivity, allergies and autoimmune disorders.
In humans, disease is often used more broadly to refer to any condition that causes pain, dysfunction, distress, social problems, or death to the person afflicted, or similar problems for those in contact with the person. In this broader sense, it sometimes includes injuries, disabilities, disorders, syndromes, infections, isolated symptoms, deviant behaviors, and atypical variations of structure and function, while in other contexts and for other purposes these may be considered distinguishable categories. Diseases can affect people not only physically, but also mentally, as contracting and living with a disease can alter the affected person's perspective on life.

## Quotes

* Only in this age and generation is it at last possible to impart the laws of magnetic healing, and to indicate the causes of those diseases—originating in the three inner bodies—which today devastate the human frame, cause endless suffering and pain, and usher man through the portal which leads to the world of bodiless existence. Only today is man at the point in the evolution of his consciousness where he can begin to realise the power of the subjective worlds, and the new and vast science of psychology is his response to this growing interest. Processes of adjustment, of elimination and of cure engage the minds of all thoughtful people as well as of all suffering people... When one enters the realm of healing, one enters a world of much esoteric knowledge, and of an infinity of conclusions, and one is faced with the formulations of many minds, who, through the ages, have sought to heal and to help. The why and the wherefore of disease have been the subject of endless investigations and speculations, and much definite deduction has been made as to the cures of such complaints; there has been also much formulation of methods, of techniques, of formulae, of prescription, of varied manipulations and of [2] theories. All these serve to fill the mind with many ideas—some correct, some erroneous—and this makes it most difficult for new ideas to enter and for the student to assimilate the hitherto unknown.
** Alice Bailey, Esoteric Healing (1953)
* All disease is the result of inhibited soul life, and that is true of all forms in all kingdoms... What is disease?... the major causes of disease are three in number: they are psychological in nature; they are inherited through group contact; and they are karmic.
** Alice Bailey, Esoteric Healing (1953)
* It will be apparent to the casual thinker that many diseases and many causes of death are due to environing conditions for which he is in no way responsible. These range all the way from purely external occurrences to hereditary predispositions. They might be listed as follows: 1. Accidents... 2. Infections coming to a man from outside and not as the result of his own peculiar blood condition... 3. Diseases due to malnutrition, particularly when found in the young... 4. Heredity. There are, as you well know, certain forms of hereditary weaknesses...
** Alice Bailey, Esoteric Healing (1953)
* [Diseases] crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them as so many anatomies.
** Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, scene 2. Memb. 3. Subsect. 10.
* Two out of three child deaths in Africa and South-east Asia are due to just six diseases – tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, measles, pneumonia and diarrhoea.
** Clive Gifford (2009). Poverty. Evans Brothers. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-237-53720-3.
* In all wars up until the Russo-Japanese War, it had been known that the “silent enemy”-disease-took a greater toll of lives among fighting men than did bullets.
** Gold, Hal (2011). “Unit 731 Testimony” (1st ed.). New York: Tuttle Pub. Chapter 1 Background of Japanese Biological Warfare
* A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.
** Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter X.
* The horseman on the white horse was clad in a showy and barbarous attire. [...] While his horse continued galloping, he was bending his bow in order to spread pestilence abroad. At his back swung the brass quiver filled with poisoned arrows, containing the germs of all diseases.
** Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916), (ch V).
* As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, Receives the lurking principle of death, The young disease, that must subdue at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.
** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle II, line 133.
* But just disease to luxury succeeds, And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds.
** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle III, line 165.
* It may also strike you, my readers, as quite shocking when I tell you that there is no such thing, basically, as disease. There are instead only processes. What you think of disease is instead the result of an exaggeration or overextension of perfectly normal body processes. You are not attacked by viruses, for instance, for all kinds of viruses exist normally in the body. There are no KILLER viruses, then but viruses that go beyond their usual bounds.
** Jane Roberts, The Way Toward Health, p. 71.
* Molecular biologists may have ignored mitochondria because they did not immediately recognize the far-reaching implications and applications of the discovery... It took time to accumulate a database of sufficient scope and content to address the many challenging questions related to anthropology, disease, evolution, and more.
** Immo E. Scheffler, as quoted by Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (2005) pp. 6-7.
* O, he's a limb, that has but a disease; Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy.
** William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act III, scene 1, line 296.
* Diseases desperate grown, By desperate appliance are reliev'd, Or not at all.
** William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act IV, scene 3, line 9.
* This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.
** William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act I, scene 2, line 125.
* Before the curing of a strong disease, Even in the instant of repair and health, The fit is strongest; evils that take leave, On their departure most of all show evil.
** William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act III, scene 4, line 112.
* I'll forbear; And am fallen out with my more headier will, To take the indispos'd and sickly fit For the sound man.
** William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act II, scene 4, line 110.
* If it weren't for alcohol, tranquilizers, antidepressants, as well as the illegal drugs, which are all consumed in vast quantities, the insanity of the human mind would become even more glaringly obvious than it is already. I believe that, if deprived of their drugs, a large part of the population would become a danger to themselves and others. These drugs, of course, simply keep you stuck in dysfunction. Their widespread use only delays the breakdown of the old mind structures and the emergence of higher consciousness. While individual users may get some relief from the daily torture inflicted on them by their minds, they are prevented from generating enough conscious presence to rise above thought and so find true liberation. p.67
** Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p.67

### Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

    Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 196.
* The remedy is worse than the disease.
** Francis Bacon, Of Seditions. Duke of Buckingham, speech in House of Lords, 1675. John Dryden, Juvenal, Satire XVI, line 31. Alain-René Lesage, Gil Blas (1715-1735), Book XII, Chapter VIII. Thomas Middleton, Family of Love (1602-07), Act V, scene 3.
* Apoplexie, and Lethargie, As forlorn hope, assault the enemy.
** Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes, Second Week. First Day, Part III. The Furies.
* Disease is an experience of mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body. Divine Science takes away this physical sense of discord, just as it removes a sense of moral or mental inharmony.
** Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, Chapter XIV. 20.
* That dire disease, whose ruthless power Withers the beauty's transient flower.
** Oliver Goldsmith, Double Transformation, line 75.
* Against diseases here the strongest fence, Is the defensive vertue, abstinence.
** Robert Herrick, Abstinence.
* Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.
** Hippocrates, Aphorisms, 6.
* D'ogni pianta palesa l'aspetto Il difetto, che il tronco nasconde Per le fronde, dal frutto, o dal fior.
** The canker which the trunk conceals is revealed by the leaves, the fruit, or the flower.
** Metastasio, Giuseppe Riconosciuto I.
* Aëre non certo corpora languor habet.
** Sickness seizes the body from bad ventilation.
** Ovid, Ars Amatoria, II, 310.
* Vitiant artus ægræ contagia mentis.
** Diseases of the mind impair the bodily powers.
** Ovid, Tristium, III, 8, 25.
* Utque in corporibus, sic in imperio, gravissimus est morbus qui a capite diffunditur.
** And as in men's bodies, so in government, that disease is most serious which proceeds from the head.
** Pliny the Younger, Epistles, Book IV. 22. Seneca the Younger, De Clementia, Book II. 2.
* Graviora quædam sunt remedia periculis.
** Some remedies are worse than the disease.
** Syrus, Maxims, 301.

## See also

* Health
* Illness