Careful Words

sickness (n.)

  To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

Book Of Common Prayer: Solemnization of Matrimony.

This sickness doth infect

The very life-blood of our enterprise.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Return unto thy rest, my soul,

From all the wanderings of thy thought,

From sickness unto death made whole,

Safe through a thousand perils brought.

James Montgomery (1771-1854): Rest for the Soul.

  Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661): Life of Monica.