Although some general practitioners now "prescribe" education to patients it would be wrong to see it as a panacea. Those who claim it can cure everything from memory loss to incontinence are being unduly optimistic. Education is an important mechanism for enhancing the health and well-being of individuals and reducing the health care and associated costs of dependence and lost earnings. It can also do a great deal to alleviate human suffering. However, one still needs to identify the extent to which people who are motivated to participate in adult education are already more likely to have positive trajectories in health and well-being, and why, and to what degree, taking courses actually contributes. It should also be acknowledged that education does not act on health in isolation from other influences, such as income. Although difficult to isolate the effects of interacting factors on people's health, empirical investigations indicate that the effect of education on health is at least as great as the effect of income. (Contains 1 figure.)