Quotes from Esther M. Sternberg

The notion of feelings as an integral part of illness is universal—not only across continents and peoples, but across the divide of time that separates us from our ancestors.

Emotions are amorphous and uncontrollable.

James Lister and Louis Pasteur were at first excluded from academic honor societies and laughed at for their theories on sterilization, vaccination, and pasteurization.

we can misinterpret some of our perceptions of emotions, those visceral feelings—mistaking anger for guilt, love for hate.

Or you can believe that you have no emotional response, feel wrapped in cotton-wool insulating yourself from the world, when in fact you are deeply grieving.

Through such nerve pathways, the emotion we call fear and the emotion we call love get translated into the physical sensations we associate with these feelings.

And with advances in cellular and molecular biology, we can piece together how such nervous system and hormonal changes can affect our susceptibility to disease.