The Imperial Laboratory: Experimental Physiology and Clinical Medicine in Post-Crimean Russi... Book

A wise, provocative book.

Some quotes:

"Health is organic innocence. It must be lost, like all innocence, so that knowledge may be possible."

"The laws of physics and chemistry do not vary according to health or disease. But to fail to admit from a biological point of view, life differentiates between its states means condemning oneself to be even unable to distinguish food from excrement. Certainly a living being's excrement can be food for another living being but not for him. What distinguishes food from excrement is not a physicochemical reality but a biological value. Likewise, what distinguishes the physiological from the pathological is not a physicochemical objective reality but a biological value."

"No one innocently knows that he is innocent since being aware of adequation to the rule means being aware of the reasons for the rule which amounts to the need for the rule. It is appropriate to contrast to the overly exploited Socratic maxim no knowing man is evil, the opposite maxim that no one is good who is aware of being so. Similarly no one is healthy who is aware of being so... But it is in the rage of guilt as in the clamor of suffering that innocence and health arise as the terms of a regression as impossible as it is sought after."

Comment would be superfluous.