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9781421412160 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Medicine and Religion:

A Historical Introduction
  • ISBN-13: 9781421412160
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Gary B. Ferngren
  • Price: AUD $59.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/05/2014
  • Format: Paperback (100.00mm X 100.00mm) 256 pages Weight: 400g
  • Categories: History of medicine [MBX]
Description
Table of
Contents
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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.Ferngren paints a broad and detailed portrait of how humans throughout the ages have drawn on specific values of diverse religious traditions in caring for the body. Religious perspectives have informed both the treatment of disease and the provision of health care. And, while tensions have sometimes existed, relations between medicine and religion have often been cooperative and mutually beneficial. Religious beliefs provided a framework for explaining disease and suffering that was larger than medicine alone could offer. These beliefs furnished a theological basis for a compassionate care of the sick that led to the creation of the hospital and a long tradition of charitable medicine.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Ancient Near East
2. Greece
3. Rome
4. Early Christianity
5. The Middle Ages
6. Islam in the Middle Ages, with Mahdieh Tavakol
7. The Early Modern Period
8. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Epilogue
Notes
Index

""[Ferngren's book] will be particularly useful for students in divinity and religious studies and all those qualifying for social health care who might find themselves in search of new perspectives in caring for the sick and the dying in today's all too often spiritually deprived, cost-benefit-based health care institutions.""

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