Imagine a world in which medicine was oriented toward healing rather than disease, where doctors believed in the natural healing capacity of human beings and emphasized prevention above treatment. In such a world, doctors and patients would be partners working toward the same ends.

Health is wholeness--wholeness in its most profound sense, with nothing left out and everything in just the right order to manifest the mystery of balance. Far from being simply the absence of disease, health is a dynamic and harmonious equilibrium of all the elements and forces making up and surrounding a human being.

In my experience, the more people have, the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that depression is a 'disease of affluence', a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world.

My personal opinion is that the neutral position on the mood spectrum—what I called emotional sea level—is not happiness but rather contentment and the calm acceptance that is the goal of many kinds of spiritual practice.

I don't think you can live without stress; I think the human life is stressful, and it probably always has been, although the forms of stress may change from culture to culture, and from time to time.

Whole plants differ in their effects from refined drugs (:)...Plants are dilute preparations (of) the active principles...Plants usually go into the body through the mouth and stomach, whereas purified chemicals can be put...by snorting or injecting...directly into...bloodstreams without giving...bodies a chance to process them. Other compounds in drug plants...may modify the active principles, making them safer.

I fully support a national health care program for the U.S.