Gulliver (ironically) attempts to educate most of the groups with which he comes in contact about the superior nature of his own native civilization in England, and he does likewise with the Houyhnhnms until he comes to the conclusion that they are actually the more advanced race. He explains that, at home, his countrymen are subject to many different diseases, most often caused by their own behaviors: eating too much, drinking lots of alcohol, lack of exercise, insufficient sleep, and so on.
Further, he says that the women are always sick, sometimes suffering from "imaginary" diseases for which doctors have invented "imaginary Cures." Most shockingly, he says that when doctors have declared that someone is unlikely to recover from an illness, and then that person does begin to get better, doctors know "how to approve their Sagacity to the World by a seasonable Dose." In other words, he says, doctors are willing to poison someone when they've predicted the patient's death so that they retain their own credibility! How he could ever believe that such a country is superior to any other is certainly ironic, and he soon comes to believe that the Houyhnhnms are truly more mature and civilized than England.
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