"We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases"
About this Quote
A physician-writer with a taste for paradox, Thomas Browne frames human striving as a kind of self-defeating professionalism. "We all labor against our own cure" lands like a clinical joke delivered at the bedside: the patient works tirelessly to avoid the one treatment that never fails. The line hinges on the ugly elegance of the word "cure". In medicine, cure is restoration; in theology, cure can mean release. Browne lets the term do double duty, then tightens the screw: death is the cure of all diseases. Not a comfort, exactly, but a cold syllogism that refuses sentimentality.
The subtext is less nihilism than perspective. Seventeenth-century medicine, even at its most learned, could not promise what modern readers assume as baseline: reliable recovery. Plague, consumption, childbirth fever, and infections made "health" feel provisional. Browne, trained in the new empiricism yet steeped in Christian metaphysics, writes from a world where science and salvation are not rival brands but adjacent languages for talking about limits. His sentence has the cadence of a moral aphorism and the logic of a case note.
The intent is to puncture the fantasy of mastery. We hustle, medicate, diet, pray, and discipline our bodies as if permanence were negotiable. Browne’s twist is that the ultimate "cure" is also the end of the subject who wanted curing. It’s a reminder that medicine’s triumphs are real, but bounded: every victory is temporary, every remission a loan.
The subtext is less nihilism than perspective. Seventeenth-century medicine, even at its most learned, could not promise what modern readers assume as baseline: reliable recovery. Plague, consumption, childbirth fever, and infections made "health" feel provisional. Browne, trained in the new empiricism yet steeped in Christian metaphysics, writes from a world where science and salvation are not rival brands but adjacent languages for talking about limits. His sentence has the cadence of a moral aphorism and the logic of a case note.
The intent is to puncture the fantasy of mastery. We hustle, medicate, diet, pray, and discipline our bodies as if permanence were negotiable. Browne’s twist is that the ultimate "cure" is also the end of the subject who wanted curing. It’s a reminder that medicine’s triumphs are real, but bounded: every victory is temporary, every remission a loan.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
|---|---|
| Source | Thomas Browne, Religio Medici — the line is attributed to Browne's Religio Medici (concise bibliographic attribution; edition/page varies). |
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