The term “infirmary” in literature has been employed both in its literal sense as a place for the sick and in metaphorical or symbolic ways that evoke a broader range of institutional or neglected spaces. In works such as Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [1, 2, 3, 4] and Eliot’s Middlemarch [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], the infirmary is depicted as a physical location—often part of a hospital or a workhouse—where characters experience physical or social decline, underscoring themes of vulnerability and neglect. Meanwhile, authors like Francis Bacon [11] and Dickens [12] use the infirmary to highlight societal care (or lack thereof) for the diseased, while Nietzsche’s striking description of an “infirmary” as a netherworld empire [13] extends the term into metaphor, representing a dark, confining space of decay. Even texts with administrative or historical dimensions, including those by Thomas Jefferson [14, 15, 16, 17], integrate the concept of the infirmary within official or bureaucratic contexts. Thus, across various texts, “infirmary” becomes a multifaceted symbol: at times a literal setting for healing or deterioration, and at other moments, a metaphor for systems of control, marginalization, and decay [18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23].