Medicine and Religion, by Gary B. Ferngren

The Cincinnati hospital where I work was founded in the 19th century by women of the Episcopal diocese to provide medical and surgical care for local children, but it has since become a large, secular research facility. Internationally known for its subspecialty research and practice innovations, the hospital re­ceives referrals from around the globe. I have yet to meet a patient who came for the spiritual environment, though the hospital’s pastoral care division employs chaplains of various faiths and denominations who are highly trained in theology, counseling, and the use of sophisticated assessment tools. Although some families develop therapeutically valuable relationships with pastoral care staff, what gets them in the door is our clinical competence in the applied science of medicine. Every­thing else is value-added.

Gary Ferngren’s handy new volume on the history of religion and medicine in the West reminds the reader how new and odd this is. From the time of the ancient Near East until very recently in the economically developed countries of the Global North, the categories we now call religion and medicine were intricately related and often inseparable. But to the degree that the relationship between religion and medicine was acknowledged during my undergraduate and medical education, it was viewed as a tale of scientific progress triumphing over religious obscurantism. Using considerable recent scholarship that calls that Whig­gish narrative into question, Ferngren re­veals a richer, more interesting story.

Before surveying 40 centuries in a geographical area stretching from Meso­po­tamia to North America, Ferngren an­nounces that his book is “neither a history of medicine nor a history of religion, . . . but rather an introduction intended for nonspecialists.” As such, the book serves the interested novice while leaving much for scholars to quibble with.