I read every evening, sometimes late into the night, with the help of kerosene lamps, often secretly, past my bedtime.

If the tumour be compressed in some, the parts in immediate contact become tense and swollen. For this reason it is the worst kind of disease. It generally commences by what the Greeks call Cacoethes, or malignant tumour, then proceeds to Carcinoma, or scirrhus, without ulceration: afterwards to ulcer: then to a thymium. None of these can be removed except the Cacoethes: the rest are aggravated by every method of treatment; and the more energetic the remedies, the more irritable they become. […] [N]o one can distinguish a cacoethes, which is curable, from a carcinoma, which is incurable, except by time and experiment.

Once written to a disk file, the data has persistence: it will still be there tomorrow when we run the next program.

[…] that man might see, / What worm begnaws — that vital core concealing / All its vile, consumptive bane, […]