Samuel Johnson's health has been a focus of the biographical and critical analysis of his life. His medical history was well documented by Johnson and his friends, and those writings have allowed later critics and doctors to infer diagnoses of conditions that were unknown in Johnson's day.
His health and conditions had "damaging effects on Johnson's personal and professional lives" likely causing him to lose opportunities to teach at prominent schools, while leading him "towards the invisible occupation of authorship".
Read more about Samuel Johnson's Health: Posthumous Diagnosis, Literary References
Famous quotes containing the words samuel johnson, samuel, johnson and/or health:
“Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it: every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 8:5.
Leaders of ancient Israel asking the last of the judges, Samuel, to appoint a king.
“Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)