The book Emil, or On education
A weak body weakens the soul. Hence the dominance of medicine, an art more fatal to people than all the diseases it claims to cure. I really don’t know what disease doctors cure us from, but I know that they endow us with the most pernicious diseases: cowardice, cowardice, gullibility, fear of death; if they heal the body, they kill the courage. What do we care that they raise corpses to their feet? We need people, and they never get out of their hands.
Medicine is in vogue between us; it should be. This is the amusement of idle people, not busy with anything, who, not knowing what to do with their time, spend it worrying about self-preservation. If they had the misfortune to be born immortal, they would be the most miserable of creatures; such a life, which they would never be afraid to lose, would have no value for them. These people need doctors who, to flatter them, threaten them and daily bring the only joy that they can perceive — the joy that they are not dead.
I have no desire to expand here on the futility of medicine. My only goal is to consider it from the moral side. However, I cannot fail to notice that people resort to the same sophisms regarding its application, as in the search for truth. They always assume that whoever takes advantage of the sick person heals him, and whoever seeks the truth finds it. They do not see that, first of all, it is necessary to compare the benefit of one healing performed by a doctor with the death of hundreds of patients killed by him, the benefit of revealed truth with the harm generated by the errors that appear at the same time with it. Science that teaches and medicine that heals are, no doubt, very good; but science that deceives and medicine that kills are bad. Learn to distinguish between them. Here is the essence of the question. If we could not know the truth, we would never be deceived by a lie; if we could refrain from wanting to be healed contrary to nature, we would never die at the hands of the physician; in both cases, abstinence would be reasonable; we, obviously, would benefit from such abstinence. I do not dispute, therefore, that medicine is useful to some people, but I say that it is harmful to the human race.
The same seems to be true of psychotherapy.