...This large and expensive stock of drugs will be unnecessary. By...doses of...medicines...multiplying...combining them properly, 20 to 30 articles, aided by the common resources of the lancet, a garden, a kitchen, fresh air, cool water, exercise, will be sufficient to cure all the diseases that are at present under the power of medicine.
Interpretation
Health can be maintained with simple, natural resources rather than relying solely on expensive medicines.
Benjamin Rush emphasizes the idea that many diseases can be treated effectively using a few essential remedies drawn from nature and common resources, such as fresh air, exercise, and basic cooking ingredients, rather than relying heavily on complex pharmaceutical interventions. This perspective advocates for a more accessible and holistic approach to health care.
In practice
During a health seminar, to emphasize simplicity in treatments.
The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life...The Bible...should be read in our schools in preference to all other books because it contains the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public happiness.
The gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation in life. Happy they who are enabled to obey them in all situations!
Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of the seats of diseases, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. How often are we disappointed in our expectation from the most certain and powerful of our remedies, by the negligence or obstinacy of our patients! What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases. We have done more — we have increased their mortality.
Temperate, sincere, and intelligent inquiry and discussion are only to be dreaded by the advocates of error. The truth need not fear them.
The art of healing is like an unroofed temple, uncovered at the top and cracked at the foundation.
[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.
Researchers linked smoking to cancer in the 1950s. Doctors believed them in the 1960s, but it was not until journalists believed the doctors in the 1970s that the public took notice.
That is the one single word that the food industry hates: 'addiction.' They much prefer words like 'crave-ability' and 'allure.'
If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.
I am a vegetarian as well as a passionate anti-alcoholic, because I can thus make better use of my brain.
The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up?
Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.