Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.

health disease medicine

About Ivan Illich

Portrait of Ivan Illich

Ivan Dominic Illich ( iv-AHN IL-itch, Austrian German: [ˈiːvan ˈɪlɪtʃ]; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book Deschooling Society criticises modern society's institutional approach to education, an approach that he argued demotivates and alienates individuals from the...

More quotations from Ivan Illich

School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

wisdom learning teaching evidence school

The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.

More quotations tagged with “medicine”

Fasting and natural diet, though essentially unknown [in today's U.S.] as a therapy, should be the first treatment when someone discovers that she or he has a medical problem. It should not be applied only to the most advanced cases, as is present practice. Whether the patient has a cardiac condition, hypertension, autoimmune disease, fibroids, or asthma, he or she must be informed that fasting and natural, plant-based diets are a viable alternative to conventional therapy, and an effective one. The time may come when not offering this substantially more effective nutritional approach will be considered malpractice.

—Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

disease fasting medicine diet

If a lot of cures are suggested for a disease it means that the disease is incurable.

—Anton Chekhov

certainty sceince medicine cures

Water, air, and cleanness are the chief articles in my pharmacy.

—Napoleon Bonaparte

water cleanliness medicine air

There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work.

—John Diamond

We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.

—Atul Gawande

knowledge science habit information medicine

History

23 Nov 2014 Added