Medicine and social conditions (Virchow)

The improvement of medicine will eventually prolong human life, but the improvement of social conditions can achieve this result more rapidly and more successfully. 
Rudolph Virchow (died 1902), quoted from E.H. Ackerknecht, Rudolf Virchow: Doctor, Statesman, Anthropologist (Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1953), p.127 – quoted in James Gilligan, Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others (Polity, 2011), p. 193–194.

[That is why] physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and social problems fall to a large extent within their jurisdiction...  Medicine is a social science, and politics is simply medicine on a larger scale.
Rudolph Virchow (died 1902), Disease, Life, and Man, tr. L. J. Rather (Stanford Univ. Press, 1958), p. 6 – quoted in James Gilligan, Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others (Polity, 2011), p. 193–194.