What does it mean by 'A young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease'?

I would suggest that youth dictates that disease is conquerable and yet as one ages, the

overall comfort of life becomes more important then the conquest of one's individual ailments.

IE: Gramma always said that alcohol and honey will cure everything,

And If not, you won't give 2 $hits.

Butch gave you a great answer.

You might also intuit from this that, when you're young, you ideate more... you're imaginative. "Anything is possible"

And, you might be this way to a fault.

You might not need an MRI, blood thinners, xanax, an anti-depressant, and Advil for a headache.

All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. Just take the Advil.

There is a reflexive aspect (I'm pretty sure I use that term is a self-jargon manner -- when I speak of reflexivity I refer to contradictions/paradoxes/mirror images).

When a person gets old, they probably do need an MRI for a headache.

You start out thinking like is conquerable in every aspect, and end up giving in to fate. Neither the young physician nor the old physician is right. Both are only half-right. In that last statement, you find the paradox. To solve it, you equate the two physicians. What they are doing as just two vicissitudes of the same thing -- the human situation.

The young are all details. There may be different drug for pain in each finger.

We old know, that vodka cures all diseases. Or if not, the wait for the common result of non-curable diseases is more fun. Besides. There is only one drug for 20 diseases. The guy with the scythe ;)

In this i could also add: I'm not young enough to know it all anymore. Just to confuse people even more ;)