“Cabot Cases” or “Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital” have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine since 1924. This paper examines 100 of the most recent “Cabot Cases”, using Galen’s case histories as a comparative tool to bring certain literary and narratological themes, which are otherwise difficult to notice, into relief. Cabot Cases offer rich portraits of the patients as characters, they idealize certain types of patients, they are subtly but profoundly moralizing, and they are also agonistic, portraying Mass General as a heroic institution saving patients from the incompetence of other hospitals.