debase - verb
To lower in character or virtue, to reduce in value or quality, as in The Fed debased the dollar; to lower in rank, significance, or dignity.
Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienest who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous.... The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.
—H. L. Mencken “The Physician” Prejudices (1922)
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