Medicine and Religion is the 1st booklet to comprehensively research the connection among medication and faith within the Western culture from precedent days to the fashionable period. starting with the earliest makes an attempt to heal the physique and account for the which means of ailment within the historical close to East, historian Gary B. Ferngren describes how the polytheistic religions of historic Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome and the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have complemented drugs within the historic, medieval, and smooth periods.

Ferngren paints a extensive and particular portrait of the way people through the a while have drawn on particular values of numerous spiritual traditions in taking care of the physique. spiritual views have knowledgeable either the therapy of illness and the supply of healthiness care. And, whereas tensions have occasionally existed, kinfolk among medication and faith have frequently been cooperative and together priceless.

Religious ideals supplied a framework for explaining disorder and ache that used to be greater than drugs on my own may possibly supply. those ideals provided a theological foundation for a compassionate care of the ailing that ended in the production of the health facility and an extended culture of charitable medicine.

Praise for Medicine and healthiness Care in Early Christianity, via Gary B. Ferngren

"This high-quality paintings seems to be ahead in addition to backward; it invitations fuller mirrored image of the various senses within which medication and faith intersect and benefits broad readership."— JAMA

"An vital ebook, for college kids of Christian theology who comprehend health and wellbeing and therapeutic to be issues of theological curiosity, and for well-being care practitioners who search a historic point of view at the improvement of the ethos in their vocation."— Journal of faith and Health