In 1946, Oxford University in England was offered large funds to create a new Institute of Human Nutrition. The University refused the funds on the ground that the knowledge of human nutrition was essentially complete, and that the proposed institution would soon run out of meaningful research projects.

... each type of civilization has had diseases peculiar to it and at each period the various social groups in any community also have differed in this regard.

Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back.

It is possible to analyze the biological and social influences that make each human being unique, unprecedented, and unrepeatable, but this analysis does not explain how and why each feels different from all other human beings.

Social evolution may be the result of intention, but it rarely, if ever, produces the result intended.

The mechanisms of vis medicatrix naturæ—the most healing power of nature—are so effective that most diseases are self-terminating.

Each civilization has its own kind of pestilence and can control it only by reforming itself.