When culture and health cross-cut each other, there's often rather treacherous terrain ahead for public health officials. Too often, health officials come in and approach health solely from one end--that being the purely physical side of things. As health treatment methods increasingly learn to adapt to the idea of wellness (complete mental, physical, and spiritual) health, I think the new question is how much credence do we give to each area. This article addresses the role of spiritual prayer in the cure of an infectious disease.A young boy sustained a minor injury in a basketball game, only to become subject to a bacterial infection caused by "a flesh-eating bacterium called strep A" according to the article. The infection then consumed his flesh at a rapid pace, disfiguring his face. According to medical professionals, the infection was so dire as to be life-threatening and the doctors informed the young boy's family that he might not survive. Shortly thereafter, the family (who was Catholic) brought in a priest to give the boy his last rites and began praying to a Kateri Tekakwitha who according to the article, "was a Mohawk who converted to Catholicism. Her face was scarred by smallpox. Legend has it, when she died, her scars vanished. She was beatified in 1980...". The family and religious officials felt she would be an appropriate person to intercede for the boy due to their shared Native American heritage and similar sufferings.
After news of the boy's illness and prayer intercessions spread through his school and family, others elsewhere took up his cause and began to pray for him. Later, a representative from the Society of Blessed Kateri came to the hospital and gave his family a pendant with Kateri's image on it. Shortly thereafter, the boy began an abrupt and miraculous recovery. After two months, the boy was released and returned home. And now, thanks to the unexplainable alteration in the disease's course, religious officials are investigating the case as a potential miracle.
Reading this, I definitely had my doubts. The article also went on to detail how the Church investigated each individual potential "miracle" and fastidiously rejected nearly 95% of submitted cases and sorted through the rest.
I think the point I took away from this article is how important it is to approach health from all sides--especially when one or another fails. Too often we are uncreative with our approaches or unwilling to try a new method. Prayer, meditation, etc. have all been shown to have effects on issues such as stress, heart rate, etc. Non-traditional medicine such as herbal remedies and acupuncture have also provided new and often reliable treatment avenues. This is not to say though that traditional medicine should be entirely eschewed, but rather perhaps when couple to non-traditional routes we can find better, even more effective cures. If anything, perhaps they will be better-suited to a particular populations' needs and beliefs. Often times too they can be more cost-effective than traditional medicine.
In public health and medicine, perhaps we become a little too jaded after a while as well. Truly, every success against a disease, every prevented death and DALY is a miracle in and of itself. Sometimes we just need to take a step back to see it.
I like the message of this article. Being raised a Catholic, I believe that there are certain medical instances that can't be explained. I think that healing can come from both spiritual and physical means, and I think that the spiritual aspect of healing cannot be ignored. However, I also agree with your comment that traditional medicine should not be entirely eschewed. Overall, though, I believe that non-traditional sources of medicine should not be underestimated in their healing capabilities.
ReplyDeleteThis article reminded me of a book I had recently read on the psychology of pain. The book outlined that sometimes ailments and diseases can't be explained by science. A man who appears to have normal back structure somehow feels excruciating pain that can't be explained by medicine and other similar cases are commonly found. In many cases, this pain is believed to be psychological in that the patients feel as if something is wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe same could also be applied to healing. This is found in the placebo effect in which the action of just taking a pill makes someone feel better because they believe the placebo will make them better. The same can be applied to non-traditional medicine. In the Western world, we sometimes demand practical medicine that makes sense. But it's possible the psychological impact of feeling better is enough to heal a person from an ailment or disease.
I think it is completely on target to say that western medicine needs to be combined with the methods of prayer and spiritual healing. Ill health takes an incredible physical toll, but the mental aspect of having every day be an unknown in regards to survival is something that we cannot prepare for nor explain. However, with the natural human instinct to try and retrieve answers, it is important to emphasize that prayer can be such an outlet.
ReplyDeleteA book that I just finished reading actually talked about the overuse of "western medicine". I was absolutely shocked at the amount of procedures and medicines that are dolled out when there is no need for them. The book, called How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, examined where there is errors between patient and physician communication and how medicine needs to be used properly- which means not underused or overused. This article just reminded me of the mindset that western medicine is not necessarily a cure-all in all instances, and that an open mind needs to be harbored when dealing with all illnesses.