Thomas Jefferson shared the following thoughts in his ‘Letter to Doctor Caspar Wistar,’ dated June 21, 1807. The letter can be found in the Writings of Thomas Jefferson.
"It is in this part of medicine that I wish to see reform… I would wish the young practitioner, especially , to have deeply impressed on his mind the real limits of his art, and that when the state of the patient gets beyond these, his office is to be watchful, but a quiet spectator of the operations of nature, giving them fair play by a well-regulated regimen, and by all the aid the patient can derive from the excitement of good spirits and hope in the patient.
"Having been so often a witness to the salutary efforts which nature makes to re-establish the disordered functions, [the physician] should trust and not hazard the interruption of a machine so complicated and so unknown as the human body, and a subject so sacred as human life."
Dr. Benjamin Rush served as Surgeon General in the Continental army and became a professor of chemistry, medical theory, and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania. He made his feelings quite clear regarding what should be included in the Constitution regarding freedom of health care.
"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom." (Circa 1787)
I don’t feel that any elaboration is needed regarding the thoughts of these two gentlemen. What strikes me of interest is the date that Dr. Benjamin Rush made his remark.