Doing Harm: A Novel

by Kelly Parsons

And, lurking beneath its more compassionate brethren, a selfish sentiment that slips unbidden into my consciousness, calculating and cruel. Self-pity.

What a magnificent description of self-pity.

Hippocrates was a Greek who had lived hundreds of years before the Roman Empire, and wondered if Latin really would have been his idiom of choice for solemn ethical declarations. In fact, I’ve since learned that it was actually Galen, a medieval doctor and translator of Hippocrates’ writings, who was probably the one who coined the Latin variation.

gossamer-like

surreptitiously,