What a notion that medicine ever cured anyone!  Killed them, yes!  
(War and Peace (1869), Tolstoy)

The Prophetic Tolstoy 

Tolstoy had some strong opinions about the medical procedures of his day:

Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink,

he nevertheless recovered.   (War and Peace (1869), Tolstoy)

One would think the situation would have improved in our day, but...maybe not:

According to the most recent (September, 2013) research¹ into the cost of medical mistakes in terms of lives lost, 210,000 Americans are killed by preventable hospital errors each year.
When deaths related to diagnostic errors, errors of omission, and failure to follow guidelines are included, the number skyrockets to an estimated 440,000 preventable hospital deaths each year!
This is more than 4.5 times higher than 1999 estimates published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM),² and makes medical errors the third-leading cause of death in the US, right after heart disease and cancer.

_http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/10/09/preventable-medical-errors.aspx?e_cid=20131009Z1_PRNL_art_1&utm_source=prmrnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20131009Z1
http://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx