Island

by Aldous Huxley

“So you think our medicine’s pretty primitive?” “That’s the wrong word. It isn’t primitive. It’s fifty percent terrific and fifty percent nonexistent. Marvelous antibiotics—but absolutely no methods for increasing resistance, so that antibiotics won’t be necessary. Fantastic operations—but when it comes to teaching people the way of going through life without having to be chopped up, absolutely nothing. And it’s the same all along the line. Alpha Plus for patching you up when you’ve started to fall apart; but Delta Minus for keeping you healthy. Apart from sewerage systems and synthetic vitamins, you don’t seem to do anything at all about prevention. And yet you’ve got a proverb: prevention is better than cure.” “But cure,” said Will, “is so much more dramatic than prevention. And for the doctors it’s also a lot more profitable.” “Maybe for your doctors,” said the little nurse. “Not for ours. Ours get paid for keeping people well.”