(1 reviews) Author: Ronald L. Numbers ISBN : 9780029192702 New from $106.98 Format: PDFMost religious traditions have a rich, if largely forgotten, heritage of involvement in medical issues of life, death, and health. Religious values influence our behavior and attitudes toward sickness, sexuality, and lifestyle, to say nothing of more controversial subjects such as abortion and euthanasia. The essays in this important book illuminate the history of health and medicine within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Bringing together 20 original articles by expert scholars in the fields of the history of religion and the history of medicine, Caring and Curing provides a fascinating and enlightening overview of how religious values have come to affect the practice of medicine and medical care.
- Hardcover: 601 pages
- Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co; First Edition edition (October 1985)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0029192706
- ISBN-13: 978-0029192702
- Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions PDF
Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions is a conglomeration of the various views from Judeo-Christianity on illness and health care. The purpose of this work is to give the reader a religious understanding and approach on the subject by using Western traditions as its foundation. The book consists of essays from Judaism and seventeen different Christian denominations, from the more traditional views of Roman Catholicism to the perspectives of more recently emerging groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses. A traditional and historical approach to medicine allows one to understand the views toward health in the past and how they can be applied today. The benefit of perceiving health care with a religious focus is that it transforms the relationship between medical practitioner and patient to realizing the power that takes place in healing and wholeness. It also causes the patient to ponder the meaning of sickness in one's life.The Judaic understanding of illness is that it is a punishment from God due to sin. One has wronged God and because of this God has given this person an illness so that he or she may suffer for one's sin. Christianity has a whole contrary meaning toward illness and views it as sanctifying and redemptive. Jesus bore the infirmities and sin of humanity and put this to death with His death on the cross. Human suffering due to illness can be united to Christ's suffering to be used as a means to conquer sin, not as a result of being conquered by sin. Infirmity brings one to a deeper understanding of Jesus' suffering and can be used to enter more into His divine nature.
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