Medicine and the Saints
Medicine and the Saints

Author: Ellen J. Amster

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-08-15

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0292745443

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The colonial encounter between France and Morocco in the late nineteenth century took place not only in the political realm but also in the realm of medicine. Because the body politic and the physical body are intimately linked, French efforts to colonize Morocco took place in and through the body. Starting from this original premise, Medicine and the Saints traces a history of colonial embodiment in Morocco through a series of medical encounters between the Islamic sultanate of Morocco and the Republic of France from 1877 to 1956. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources in both French and Arabic, Ellen Amster investigates the positivist ambitions of French colonial doctors, sociologists, philologists, and historians; the social history of the encounters and transformations occasioned by French medical interventions; and the ways in which Moroccan nationalists ultimately appropriated a French model of modernity to invent the independent nation-state. Each chapter of the book addresses a different problem in the history of medicine: international espionage and a doctor's murder; disease and revolt in Moroccan cities; a battle for authority between doctors and Muslim midwives; and the search for national identity in the welfare state. This research reveals how Moroccans ingested and digested French science and used it to create a nationalist movement and Islamist politics, and to understand disease and health. In the colonial encounter, the Muslim body became a seat of subjectivity, the place from which individuals contested and redefined the political.

Medical Saints
Medical Saints

Author: Jacalyn Duffin

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-06-13

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0199743177

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is an exploration of illness and healing experiences in contemporary society through the veneration of saints: primarily the twin doctors Saints Cosmas and Damian. It also follows the author's personal journey from her role as a hematologist who inadvertently served as an expert witness in a miracle to her research as a historian on the origins, meaning and functions of saints. Sources include interviews with devotees in both North America and Europe. Cosmas and Damian were martyred around the year 300 A.D. in what is now Syria. Called the "Anargyroi" (without silver) because they charged no fees, they became patrons of medicine, surgery, and pharmacy as their cult spread widely across Europe. The near eastern origin explains their popularity in Byzantine and Orthodox traditions and the concentration of their shrines in Eastern Europe, Southern Italy, and Sicily. The Medici family of Florence also viewed the "santi medici" as patrons, and their deeds were depicted by great Renaissance artists. In medical literature they are now revered as patrons of transplantation. Duffin's research focuses on how people have taken the saints with them as they moved within Italy and beyond. It also shows that their veneration is not confined to immigrant traditions, and that it fills important functions in health care and healing. Duffin's conclusions are situated within scholarship in medicine, medical history, sociology, anthropology, and popular religion; and intersect with the current medical debate over spiritual healing. This work springs from medical history and Roman Catholic traditions; however, it extends to general observations about the behaviors of sick people and about the formal responses to individual illness from collectivities in religion, medicine, and, indeed, history.

Medical Miracles
Medical Miracles

Author: Jacalyn Duffin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 019533650X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Modern culture tends to separate medicine and miracles, but their histories are closely intertwined. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes saints through canonization based on evidence that they worked miracles, as signs of their proximity to God. Physicianhistorian Jacalyn Duffin has examined Vatican sources on 1400 miracles from six continents and spanning four centuries. Overwhelmingly the miracles cited in canonizations between 1588 and 1999 are healings, and the majority entail medical care and physician testimony. These remarkable records contain intimate stories of illness, prayer, and treatment, as told by people who rarely leave traces: peasants and illiterates, men and women, old and young. A woman's breast tumor melts away; a man's wounds knit; a lame girl suddenly walks; a dead baby revives. Suspicious of wishful thinking or na ve enthusiasm, skeptical clergy shaped the inquiries to identify recoveries that remain unexplained by the best doctors of the era. The tales of healing are supplemented with substantial testimony from these physicians. Some elements of the miracles change through time. Duffin shows that doctors increase in number; new technologies are embraced quickly; diagnoses shift with altered capabilities. But other aspects of the miracles are stable. The narratives follow a dramatic structure, shaped by the formal questions asked of each witness and by perennial reactions to illness and healing. In this history, medicine and religion emerge as parallel endeavors aimed at deriving meaningful signs from particular instances of human distress -- signs to explain, alleviate, and console in confrontation with suffering and mortality. A lively, sweeping analysis of a fascinating set of records, this book also poses an exciting methodological challenge to historians: miracle stories are a vital source not only on the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people, but also on medical science and its practitioners.

Medicine and the Saints
Medicine and the Saints

Author: Ellen J. Amster

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-08-15

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 0292754817

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The colonial encounter between France and Morocco took place not only in the political realm but also in the realm of medicine. Because the body politic and the physical body are intimately linked, French efforts to colonize Morocco took place in and through the body. Starting from this original premise, Medicine and the Saints traces a history of colonial embodiment in Morocco through a series of medical encounters between the Islamic sultanate of Morocco and the Republic of France from 1877 to 1956. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources in both French and Arabic, Ellen Amster investigates the positivist ambitions of French colonial doctors, sociologists, philologists, and historians; the social history of the encounters and transformations occasioned by French medical interventions; and the ways in which Moroccan nationalists ultimately appropriated a French model of modernity to invent the independent nation-state. Each chapter of the book addresses a different problem in the history of medicine: international espionage and a doctor’s murder; disease and revolt in Moroccan cities; a battle for authority between doctors and Muslim midwives; and the search for national identity in the welfare state. This research reveals how Moroccans ingested and digested French science and used it to create a nationalist movement and Islamist politics, and to understand disease and health. In the colonial encounter, the Muslim body became a seat of subjectivity, the place from which individuals contested and redefined the political.

Not All of Us Are Saints
Not All of Us Are Saints

Author: David Hilfiker

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2004-08

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 080907401X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The story of what it means for a middle-class white male physician to confront the health problems of ravaged ghetto communities.

Health and Medicine Among the Latter-day Saints
Health and Medicine Among the Latter-day Saints

Author: Lester E. Bush

Publisher: Crossroad Publishing

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A fascinating introduction to the "quintessential American religion" by a Mormon doctor and scholar. Bush addresses 10 key themes from the Mormon point of view--dying, passages, well-being, healing, suffering, madness, sexuality, caring, dignity, and morality--as well as healing practices and the Mormon health code.

Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics
Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics

Author: Courtney S. Campbell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-01-22

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0197538533

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics provides the first comprehensive treatment of principles and positions on questions of bioethics encountered by members, professionals, and ecclesiastical leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). The book addresses three fundamental features of a coherent religious bioethics: precepts for practical decision-making, general ethical principles, and core religious convictions that give a distinctive motivation for personal, communal, and professional integrity. LDS ethical principles of love, hospitality to strangers, covenantal solidarity, justice, and moral agency are integrated with central topics in bioethics including abortion, genetic testing and enhancements, in vitro fertilization, medical assisted death, medicinal marijuana, neonatal intensive care, organ donation, preventive health care, universal access to care, and vaccinations. This book uses first-person experiences to give voice to the lived moral realities of Latter-day Saints as they experience difficult and wrenching ethical questions and choices as persons, family members, community members, professionals, and as citizens within the context of their distinctive faith convictions. It situates these communal conversations within the broader discourse of bioethics and thereby supports both bioethics and religious literacy. Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics also examines circumstances in which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints engages in a moral witness of its values on matters of public policy, such as legalization of physician-assisted death, of elective abortion, and of medicinal marijuana. The book concludes with a distinctive normative argument on why LDS ethical principles and practices require support of universal access to an adequate level of health care for all persons. It provides an appendix of significant LDS ecclesiastical policies on medical, health, and moral issues, making it a definitive educational and reference compilation.

Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages
Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages

Author: Jenni Kuuliala

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789462983373

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Bodily suffering and patient, Christlike attitudes towards that suffering were among the key characteristics of sainthood throughout the medieval period. Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages analyses the meanings given to putative saints' bodily infirmities in late medieval canonization hearings. How was an individual saint's bodily ailment investigated in the inquests, and how did the witnesses (re)construct the saintly candidates' ailments? What meanings were given to infirmity when providing proofs for holiness? This study depicts holy infirmity as an aspect of sanctity that is largely defined within the community, in continual dialogue with devotees, people suffering from doubt, the holy person, and the cultural patterns ascribed to saintly life. Furthermore, it analyses how the meanings given to saints' infirmities influenced and reflected society's attitudes towards bodily ailments -- or dis/ability -- in general.

Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity
Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity

Author: Gary B. Ferngren

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2016-08

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1421420066

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing on New Testament studies and recent scholarship on the expansion of the Christian church, Gary B. Ferngren presents a comprehensive historical account of medicine and medical philanthropy in the first five centuries of the Christian era. Ferngren first describes how early Christians understood disease. He examines the relationship of early Christian medicine to the natural and supernatural modes of healing found in the Bible. Despite biblical accounts of demonic possession and miraculous healing, Ferngren argues that early Christians generally accepted naturalistic assumptions about disease and cared for the sick with medical knowledge gleaned from the Greeks and Romans. Ferngren also explores the origins of medical philanthropy in the early Christian church. Rather than viewing illness as punishment for sins, early Christians believed that the sick deserved both medical assistance and compassion. Even as they were being persecuted, Christians cared for the sick within and outside of their community. Their long experience in medical charity led to the creation of the first hospitals, a singular Christian contribution to health care. "A succinct, thoughtful, well-written, and carefully argued assessment of Christian involvement with medical matters in the first five centuries of the common era . . . It is to Ferngren's credit that he has opened questions and explored them so astutely. This fine work looks forward as well as backward; it invites fuller reflection of the many senses in which medicine and religion intersect and merits wide readership."—Journal of the American Medical Association "In this superb work of historical and conceptual scholarship, Ferngren unfolds for the reader a cultural milieu of healing practices during the early centuries of Christianity."—Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith "Readable and widely researched . . . an important book for mission studies and American Catholic movements, the book posits the question of what can take its place in today's challenging religious culture."—Missiology: An International Review Gary B. Ferngren is a professor of history at Oregon State University and a professor of the history of medicine at First Moscow State Medical University. He is the author of Medicine and Religion: A Historical Introduction and the editor of Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction.

Nicholas Black Elk
Nicholas Black Elk

Author: Jon M. Sweeney

Publisher: Liturgical Press

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 0814644414

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk (1863—1950) is popularly celebrated for his fascinating spiritual life. How could one man, one deeply spiritual man, serve as both a traditional Oglala Lakota medicine man and a Roman Catholic catechist and mystic? How did these two spiritual and cultural identities enrich his prayer life? How did his commitment to God, understood through his Lakota and Catholic communities, shape his understanding of how to be in the world? To fully understand the depth of Black Elk’s life-long spiritual quest requires a deep appreciation of his life story. He witnessed devastation on the battlefields of Little Bighorn and the Massacre at Wounded Knee, but also extravagance while performing for Queen Victoria as a member of “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show. Widowed by his first wife, he remarried and raised eight children. Black Elk’s spiritual visions granted him wisdom and healing insight beginning in his childhood, but he grew progressively physically blind in his adult years. These stories, and countless more, offer insight into this extraordinary man whose cause for canonization is now underway at the Vatican.