Survival Arts

Fascinating Mencken quote on the role of medicine

Bear in mind this was written in the 1930's, a time when the role of medicine was far more profoundly focussed on service to the individual, rather than as a tool of social engineering (a path we've been headed down for a few decades):

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. The whole hygienic art, indeed, resolves itself into an ethical exhortation. This brings it, in the end, into diametrical conflict with medicine proper. The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous, it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution.

H. L. Mencken