-Department of English-
Health Humanities Undergraduate Research
Intersectionality of Religion & Medicine
Archive
Background Texts
Medicine & Religion: A Historical Introduction by Gary B. Ferngren.
"Medicine and Religion is the first book to comprehensively examine the relationship between medicine and religion in the Western tradition from ancient times to the modern era. Beginning with the earliest attempts to heal the body and account for the meaning of illness in the ancient Near East, historian Gary B. Ferngren describes how the polytheistic religions of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome and the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have complemented medicine in the ancient, medieval, and modern periods"
Source: amazon.com
Essential Readings in Medicine & Religion by Gary B. Ferngren.
"Gary B. Ferngren and Ekaterina N. Lomperis have gathered a rich collection of annotated primary sources that illustrate the intersection of medicine and religion. Intended as a companion volume to Ferngren’s classic Medicine and Religion, which traces the history of the relationship of medicine to religion in the Western world from the earliest ancient Near Eastern societies to the twenty-first century, this useful and extensive sourcebook places each key document in historical context. Drawing from more than 160 texts, the book explores a number of themes, including concepts of health, the causes and cure of disease, medical ethics, theodicy, beneficence, religious healing, consolation, and death and dying. Each chapter begins with an introduction that furnishes a basic historical setting for the period covered. Modern translations, some of which have been made especially for this volume, are used whenever possible. The texts are numbered sequentially within each chapter and preceded by a short introduction to both the author and the subject."
Source: amazon.com
Part I: Ancient Medicine
The Soul of Medicine: Spiritual Perspectives and Clinical Practice by John R. Peteet and Michael n D'ambra.
"The Soul of Medicine explores the role and influence of spirituality in clinical practice, professionalism, and medical education. The contributors to this volume approach this topic from their own spiritual perspectives—Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, New Age / Eclectic, secular, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Scientist. Their thought-provoking essays provide rich insights not only into the needs of patients with various world views but also into how spirituality influences the practice of medicine."
Source: amazon.com
Anecdotes and Antidotes: A Medieval Arabic History of Physicians by Ibn Abi Usaybi'ah.
"Anecdotes and Antidotes is an abridged version of this world history of medicine. It comprises 103 biographies of physicians and philosophers, organized geographically and chronologically, from the 4th century BC to the 13th century, and includes seminal Muslim, Christian and Jewish figures. It contains vital medical and historical information, as well as revealing the cultural values, interests and concerns of the literary and intellectual elite of the time."
The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, and Charity by Ahmed Ragab.
"The first monograph on the history of Islamic hospitals, this volume focuses on the under-examined Egyptian and Levantine institutions of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. By the twelfth century, hospitals serving the sick and the poor could be found in nearly every Islamic city. Ahmed Ragab traces the varying origins and development of these institutions, locating them in their urban environments and linking them to charity networks and patrons' political projects. Following the paths of patients inside hospital wards, he investigates who they were and what kinds of experiences they had. The Medieval Islamic Hospital explores the medical networks surrounding early hospitals and sheds light on the particular brand of practice-oriented medicine they helped to develop. Providing a detailed picture of the effect of religion on medieval medicine, it will be essential reading for those interested in history of medicine, history of Islamic sciences, or history of the Mediterranean."
Source: amazon.com
Source: amazon.com
Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture by Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa.
"Current preoccupations with the body have led to a growing interest in the intersections between religion, literature and the history of medicine, and, more specifically, how they converge within a given culture. This collection of essays explores the ways in which aspects of medieval culture were predicated upon an interaction between medical and religious discourses, particularly those inflected by contemporary gendered ideologies. The essays interrogate this convergence broadly in a number of different ways: textually, conceptually, historically, socially and culturally. They argue for an inextricable relationship between the physical and spiritual in accounts of health, illness and disability, and demonstrate how medical, religious and gender discourses were integrated in medieval culture."
Source: amazon.com
Part II: Development of Modern Medicine
Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine by W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter.
"This is a comprehensive reference work which surveys all aspects of the history of medicine, both clinical and social, and reflects the complementary approaches to the discipline. The editors have assembled an international team of scholars to provide detailed and informative factual surveys with contemporary interpretations and historiographical debate."
Source: amazon.com
Secret Doctors: Ethnomedicine of African Americans by Wonda L. Fontenot.
"Based on an ethnographic study of the traditional medicine of African Americans in the rural southern United States, this work concentrates on the original Louisiana Territory, with its Native and African American indigenous traditions, and the French migration and Black Haitian freed and enslaved population influx during the 1700s and 1800s. Fontenot finds strong ties between rural Louisiana practices and Haitian and West African medicine. The ethnographer, a native of the region where she did her research, is respected among local practicing secret doctors and is able to give a unique insider's view. Aside from documenting a rare treasure of our American cultural diversity, this study has a wider purpose in the field of health practices and policy. The high cost of Western medicine, lack of access to quality care, and the patient-doctor ratio are areas of major national concern, and rural residents and people of color are recognized to be the most at-risk populations. The alternative health-care system presented here can strengthen mainstream medicine's understanding of such patient populations while preserving valuable knowledge of healing plants and culturally sensitive therapies."
Source: amazon.com
Prescribing Faith: Medicine, Media, and Religion in American Culture by Claire Hoertz Badaracco.
"The healing powers of medicine and prayer are often media headlines. Not explored is how media itself has shaped popular ideas about religion and health. Prescribing Faith traces the confluence of medicine, media and religion from mid-nineteenth century American culture to the present day. Badaracco examines how media portrays the relationship between religious faith and medicine, showing that the relationship is one fraught with conflict of interest, controversy, and paradox. Prescribing Faith offers valuable insight into deconstructing religion and medicine as shaped by today's media."
Source: amazon.com
Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in Early Modern England by Jeremy Schmidt.
"Melancholy is rightly taken to be a central topic of concern in early modern culture, and it continues to generate scholarly interest among historians of medicine, literature, psychiatry and religion. This book considerably furthers our understanding of the issue by examining the extensive discussions of melancholy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious and moral philosophical publications, many of which have received only scant attention from modern scholars."
Source: amazon.com
Part III: Modern Medicine
Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing by Lucy H. Pearce.
"Medicine Woman voices a deep yearning for a broader vision of what it means to be human than our current paradigm allows for, calling on an ancient archetype of healing, Medicine Woman, to re-vision how we can navigate sickness and harness its transformational powers in order to heal. Packed with dozens of healing arts exercises and hundreds of medicine questions to help integrate body and mind in the healing process."
Source: amazon.com
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
"Through miscommunications about medical dosages and parental refusal to give certain medicines due to mistrust, misunderstandings, and behavioral side effects, and the inability of the doctors to develop more empathy with the traditional Hmong lifestyle or try to learn more about the Hmong culture, Lia's condition worsens. The dichotomy between the Hmong's perceived spiritual factors and the Americans' perceived scientific factors comprises the overall theme of the book."
Spirituality, Healing and Medicine: Return to the Silence by David Aldridge
"In Spirituality, Healing and Medicine he evaluates the existing literature from across the disciplines to ascertain just how effective and influential spiritual healing may be on the patient's physical and psychological well-being. He encourages us to redefine treatment strategies and the ways in which we understand health, and argues that the spiritual elements of experience help the patient to find purpose, meaning and hope in the face of sickness. It is in the understanding of suffering and the need for deliverance from it, he suggests, that the traditions and aims of medicine and spirituality meet."
Source: amazon.com
Source: amazon.com
Handbook of Religion and Mental Health by David H. RosmarinHarold G. Koenig.
"The book describes how religious beliefs and practices relate to mental health and influence mental health care. It presents research on the association between religion and personality, coping behavior, anxiety, depression, psychoses, and successes in psychotherapy and includes discussions on specific religions and their perspectives on mental health."
Source: amazon.com