The main impression growing out of twelve years on the faculty of a medical school is that the No.1 health problem in the U.S. today, even more than AIDS or cancer, is that Americans don’t know how to think about health and illness. Our reactions are formed on the terror level.

　　We fear the worst, expect the worst, thus invite the worst. The result is that we are becoming a nation of weaklings and hypochondriacs, a self-medicating society incapable of

　　distinguishing between casual, everyday symptoms and those that require professional attention.

　　Early in life, too, we become seized with the bizarre idea that we are constantly assaulted by invisible monsters called germs, and that we have to be on constant alert to protect ourselves against their fury. Equal emphasis, however, is not given to the presiding fact that our bodies are superbly equipped to deal with the little demons and the best way of forestalling an attack is to maintain a sensible life-style.

　　【參考翻譯】

　　在醫(yī)學院任教十二年來，我獲得的主要印象是，當今美國頭號健康問題——一個比艾滋病或癌癥更為嚴重的問題——是美國人不知道如何去認識健康與疾病。我們的反應(yīng)是驚恐萬狀。我們怕最壞的事，想著最壞的事，而恰恰就召來了最壞的事。結(jié)果 ，我們變成了一個孱弱不堪，總疑心自己有病的民族，一個分不清哪些是日常偶發(fā)癥狀，哪些是需要治療的癥狀，而自己擅自用藥的社會。

　　我們年輕的時候還染上了一種奇怪的觀念：一種肉眼看不見的叫做細菌的小妖怪在不斷向我們進攻，我們必須長備不懈地保護自己不受其傷害。然而，對另一個重要事實，我們卻未能給予同樣的重視，那就是，我們的身體裝備精良，足以對付這些小妖怪，而且防止妖怪進攻的最佳途徑就是保持合理的生活方式。