Thomas Mann

A tall young girl in a green sweater, with untidy hair and foolish, half-opened eyes, brushed past Hans Castorp, nearly touching him with her arm. And as she did so, she whistled - oh, impossible! Yes, she did though; not with her mouth, indeed, for she did not pucker the lips, but held them firmly closed. She whistled from somewhere inside, and looked at him with her silly, half-shut eyes - it was an extraordinarily unpleasant whistle, harsh and penetrating, yet hollow-sounding; a long-drawn-out note, falling at the end, like the sound made by those rubber pigs one buys at fairs, that give out the air in a wailing key as they collapse. The sound issued, inexplicably from her breast - and then, with her troop, she had passed on. (from 'The Magic Mountain') - Thomas Mann

It was coughing, obviously a man coughing; but coughing like to no other Hans Castorp had ever heard, and compared with which any other had been a magnificent and healthy manifestation of life: a coughing that had no conviction and gave no relief, that did not even come out in paroxysms, but was just a feeble, dreadful welling up of the juices of organic dissolution. (from 'The Magic Mountain', Chapter 1) - Thomas Mann

I emphasize this because it is to my mind just a passing virtue. Medicine and writing go well together, they shed light on each other and both do better by going hand in hand. A doctor possessed of the writer's art will be the better consoler to anyone rolling in agony; conversely, a writer who understands the life of the body, its powers and its pains, its fluids and functions, its blessings and banes, has a great advantage over him who knows nothing of such things. (from Joseph the Provider; New York; Alfred Knopf, 1944) - Thomas Mann