Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Stewart Stafford

Quote by Stewart Stafford

“Moments of extreme joy or sorrow always feel surreal and incredible, which tells us that life is mostly a voyage of mundanity between distant, analogous shores of disbelief.”

Quote by Stewart Stafford

Create image

Author

Stewart Stafford

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Stewart Stafford. more

You May Also Like

“The first hospital building had been constructed there in 1811; only eight years later Bellevue became the first U.S. hospital to formally require a qualified physician to pronounce a death (after a desperately ill man had been discovered among the corpses stacked on the morgue wagon).”

HistoryHospitalDeborah BlumBellevue
Book:The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Create image

“The current head of that ward, an alienist named Menas Gregory, had been trying for years to change that haunted reputation. He angrily defended people in his care, many of whom had been brought in against their will when their families had them declared crazy. The lost occupants of his ward needed help, Gregory argued, not mockery, not groundless fear. He worried at how slow people accepted that, even in his own institution. 'There is, at the present time, no place where these patients may receive proper treatment.”

Deborah BlumAlienist DoctorBellevueMenas Gregory
Book:The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Create image

“Norris was particularly exasperated by a report that loosely blamed a man's death on wood alcohol. The document stated that the victim had been drinking heavily in the hours before his collapse. He'd also been stricken with sudden blindness (a classic symptom of wood alcohol poisoning) several hours before lapsing into a coma. The death certificate listed wood alcohol poisoning as a 'more than probable' cause. But 'more than probable' was hardly a professional opinion, Norris said. [...]”

ProfessionalismDeborah BlumNorrisWood Alcohol
Book:The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Create image

“The photographer had a camera strapped around one leg, attached to a cable that ran up his trouser leg and into a pocket. He could squeeze a bulb in his pocket to take one picture which would be unnoticed in the glare of sparks and the horror generated by the chair.”

PhotographerNonfictionPictureCameraElectric ChairDeborah Blum
Book:The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Create image

“The painters were teenage girls and young women who became friendly during their hours together and entertained themselves during breaks by playing with the paint. They sprinkled the luminous liquid in their hair to make their curls twinkle in the dark. They brightened their fingernails with it. One girl covered her teeth to give herself a Cheshire cat smile when she went home at night. None of them considered this behavior risky.”

NonfictionPaintersDeborah BlumCheshire CatRadiumRadium Girls
Book:The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Create image

“His son, Joseph, an organic chemist, had once announced that he'd decided early on against forensic toxicology: he could never have so many lives and deaths on his conscience. His father understood him. Because sometimes the dead did walk in Alexander Gettler's sleep, sometimes they rattled in the black chair of Sing Sing, and always, as he admitted in that last vulnerable interview, 'I keep asking myself, have I done everything right?”

NonfictionInterviewDeborah BlumForensicAlexander GettlerForensic Toxicology
Book:The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Create image