Relationship between religions and medicine
As a strong driving force in ancient world, religion was playing a large part during the development of medicine in Greece and Rome.
During the era of Edwin Smith Papyrus, the oldest known surgical papyrus in about 2000- 1600 BCE, the worship of gods was already affecting the medicine directly. As stated in case nine of the papyrus, while seeing a patient with an open trauma on forehead, specific incantations were called when applying specific recipe of treatment. Moreover, the description of “decisive point”, the point that whether the patient would recover or die become known to the physicians, is also from the sense of religion. As narrated in case twenty-one, “thou shouldst put him at his mooring stakes, until the knowest he has reached a decisive point”.
Gradually, the religion wasn’t only involved in the specific treatment for specific diseases, but also the chance to develop healthy conditions for the sick …show more content…
In On the Sacred Disease, which was written in 400 BCE, [Hippocrates] advocated for the separation between medicine and religions. According to the [Hippocrates], the symptoms of the on-set epilepsy were seen as signs of “sacred disease” in the religious context. Doctors then “use divinity as a pretext and screen of their own ability to afford any assistance”. Purification, incantations, and abstinence from certain foods were administered, only to protect doctors, themselves, from being blamed because of possible deteriorations of patients’ symptoms. As [Hippocrates] stated, “if the person should recover, theirs would be the honor and credit; and if he should die, they would have a certain defense, as if the gods, and not they, were to blame”. They would be secure treating patients without effective strategy, even in a harmful way, as long as they were protected by the
As a strong driving force in ancient world, religion was playing a large part during the development of medicine in Greece and Rome.
During the era of Edwin Smith Papyrus, the oldest known surgical papyrus in about 2000- 1600 BCE, the worship of gods was already affecting the medicine directly. As stated in case nine of the papyrus, while seeing a patient with an open trauma on forehead, specific incantations were called when applying specific recipe of treatment. Moreover, the description of “decisive point”, the point that whether the patient would recover or die become known to the physicians, is also from the sense of religion. As narrated in case twenty-one, “thou shouldst put him at his mooring stakes, until the knowest he has reached a decisive point”.
Gradually, the religion wasn’t only involved in the specific treatment for specific diseases, but also the chance to develop healthy conditions for the sick …show more content…
In On the Sacred Disease, which was written in 400 BCE, [Hippocrates] advocated for the separation between medicine and religions. According to the [Hippocrates], the symptoms of the on-set epilepsy were seen as signs of “sacred disease” in the religious context. Doctors then “use divinity as a pretext and screen of their own ability to afford any assistance”. Purification, incantations, and abstinence from certain foods were administered, only to protect doctors, themselves, from being blamed because of possible deteriorations of patients’ symptoms. As [Hippocrates] stated, “if the person should recover, theirs would be the honor and credit; and if he should die, they would have a certain defense, as if the gods, and not they, were to blame”. They would be secure treating patients without effective strategy, even in a harmful way, as long as they were protected by the