Medicine and Religion

Medicine and Religion: A Historical Introduction Hardcover – January 10, 2014

Author: Visit Amazon's Gary B. Ferngren Page | Language: English | ISBN: 1421412152 | Format: PDF, EPUB

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Medicine and Religion: A Historical Introduction – January 10, 2014
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This book is highly recommended to anyone who is interested in the intersection of religion and medicine... I expect this book to become required reading for many clinical health care and bioethics classes (as well as history classes).

(Sharon Packer Metapsychology)

About the Author

Gary B. Ferngren is a professor of history at Oregon State University, editor of Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, and author of Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity, both published by Johns Hopkins.

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Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (January 10, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1421412152
ISBN-13: 978-1421412153
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,593,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

A few years ago, I read The Western Medical Tradition published by Cambridge University Press. While these two massive volumes were very informative, they did not have the impact that Gary Ferngren’s Medicine & Religion: A Historical Introduction had on me. In a little over 200 pages, Ferngren covered all the major epochs where medicine and religion intersect. Ferngren’s book was also a pleasure to read (I had several dozing-off sessions reading The Western Medical Tradition) because the editing job is fantastic. This book should be mandatory reading for seminary and Christian medical students, as well as pastors and Christian healthcare professionals.

In the introduction, Ferngren explains the critical need to interpret medical and religious history in context. We cannot read modern discoveries into the past to try to prove how advanced a culture was (such as some Christian groups do today), nor are we at liberty to assume a discipline like medical science remained static throughout the ages. Rather, we need “contextualism,” writes Ferngren, “an approach that recognizes that all medical ideas and practices, including our own, are shaped by their cultural context” (3).

Moving into the body of Medicine & Religion Ferngren plants the reader in the Near East to consider medical practices in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Hebrews and Israel, and Hellenistic Judaism. He then surveys Greece, starting the reader in the archaic period, moving to the father of medicine Hippocrates in the classical age, the origin of humoral medicine, the devastating plague of Athens described by Thucydides, and concludes with the famed healing cult and temple of the god Asclepius.