Muscular dystrophy ... was never seen until Duchenne described it in the 1850s. By 1860, after his original description, many hundreds of cases had been recognised and described, so much so that Charcot said: 'How is it that a disease so common, so widespread, and so recognisable at a glance - a disease which has doubtless always existed - how is it that it is recognised only now? Why did we need M. Duchenne to open our eyes?'

Music has a bonding power, it's primal social cement

Nature gropes and blunders and performs the crudest acts. There is no steady advance upward. There is no design.

There is only one cardinal rule: One must always listen to the patient.

Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.

When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were, I answered, smoked salmon and Bach.

Dangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well