Beware of Pity

by Stefan Zweig

I’ve destroyed your conception of a doctor as a helper of mankind and fount of truth? You, in your youthful enthusiasm, had had a very different notion of medical morality, and are now—oh, I can tell!—Disillusioned and even revolted at the thought of such practices. I am sorry, but medicine has nothing to do with morals; every illness is in itself an anarchistic phenomenon, a revolt against Nature, and one must therefore employ every means to fight it, every means. No, no pity for the sick—the sick person places himself outside the law, he offends against law and order, and in order to restore law and order, to restore the sick person himself, one must, as in the case of every revolt, attack ruthlessly, enjoy every weapon at one’s command, for goodness and truth have never yet succeeded in curing humanity or even a single human being.