Nature religion in America : from the Algonkian Indians to the New Age

Notes:

• This study reveals an unorganized and previously unacknowledged religion at the heart of American culture. Nature, Albanese argues, has provided a compelling religious center throughout American history.

Reconsidering nature religion

Notes:

• Nature religion is a much broader and more pervasive part of our culture than we may know. In the late twentieth century, for example, certain nature-based New Age perspectives and practices emerged—developments whose seeds were planted in the nature religion of nineteenth-century America. In Reconsidering Nature Religion, Catherine Albanese looks at the place where nature and religion come together, and explores how this operates in contemporary life and thinking. Nature, she says, functions as an absolute that grounds and orients life. Religion concerns the ways that people use this absolute of nature to form a meaningful life. And religion itself provides ways of interacting with nature. Nature religion is one essential way that people relate to the ordinary and extra-ordinary aspects of their worlds. It was so for people like the famous naturalist John Muir, and remains so for us today. For all of us, nature works in a religious way that informs and transforms life.

Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages

Tags:

• Catholicism
• Health
• History, Medieval
• Medicine
• Medicine, Medieval
• Religion and Medicine
• Religious aspects

Notes:

• The sheer extent of crossover - medics as religious men, religious men as medics, medical language at the service of preaching and moral-theological language deployed in medical writings - is the driving force behind these studies. The book reflects the extraordinary advances which ‘pure’ history of medicine has made in the last twenty years: there is medicine at the levels of midwife and village practitioner, the sweep of the learned Greek and Latin tradition of over a millennium; there is control of midwifery by the priest, therapy through liturgy, medicine as an expression of religious life for heretics, medicine invading theologians’ discussion of earthly paradise; and so on.

Healing logics : culture and medicine in modern health belief systems

Notes:

• Healing Logics provides an extensive, multicultural look at folk and alternative beliefs and practices concerning health and medicine and examines the interplay between formal and folk health care. It contains the following original contributions by leading scholars in the fields of medical anthropology and folk medicine.

History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction

Tags:

• History
• Medicine

Notes:

• Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, this Very Short Introduction surveys the history of medicine from classical times, through the scholastic medieval tradition and the Enlightenment to the present day. Taking a thematic rather than strictly chronological approach, W.F. Bynum, explores the key turning points in the history of Western medicine-such as the first surgical procedures, the advent of hospitals, the introduction of anesthesia, X-Rays, vaccinations, and many other innovations, as well as the rise of experimental medicine. The book also explores Western medicine’s encounters with Chinese and Indian medicine, as well as nontraditional treatments such as homeopathy, chiropractic, and other alternative medicines. Covering a vast amount of information, this Very Short Introduction sheds new light on medicine’s past, while at the same time engaging with contemporary issues, discoveries, and controversies, such as the spiraling costs of health care, lack of health insurance for millions, breakthrough treatments, and much more.

Mesmerism and the American cure of souls

Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life

Tags:

• 1960-
• Alternative medicine
• religion
• United States

Notes:

• The late 1980s have seen an explosion of interest in an unconventional, and sometimes bizarre, set of practices and beliefs commonly called the New Age movement. Led by such visible figures as Shirley MacLaine, thousands of Americans have turned to a wide range of self-help methods and philosophies geared toward spiritual fulfillment and, particularly, healing of the body, including acupuncture, channeling, and crystals. What all these methods seem to have in common is an attempt to eschew conventional medical treatments, to move beyond the mysteries of the body to those of the psyche and soul. But as Robert C. Fuller demonstrates in this fascinating and surprising new book, such “alternative” forms of healing are nothing new in American culture. Going back to the early nineteenth century, Fuller asserts, Americans have relied on a bewildering assortment of unorthodox medical systems that represent a characteristically American strain of religious thought--a belief that spiritual, physical, and even economic well-being flow from an individual’s rapport with the cosmos. Drawing on a wealth of historical, psychological, and sociological information, Fuller’s story begins with such early health reforms as homeopathy, hydropathy, and Thomsonianism (which held that all disease was caused by cold and could be cured by heat). Though fairly conventional in outlook, they signaled the appearance of metaphysical elements that were destined to erupt in later movements. Fuller then looks at mesmerism and Swedenborgianism, which sprang up in the 1830s and 40s. Both of these movements were extremely popular in America, promising a triumph of piety and spirituality over the weaknesses of the body and mind, and changing the way thousands of Americans looked at modern medicine. Fuller traces this increasing metaphysical dimension, first in the early practices of osteopathic and chiropractic medicine, and then throughout the twentieth century in such varied and colorful systems as crystal healing, rolfing, spirit channeling, holistic health, and even Alcoholics Anonymous. Fuller argues that these healing movements have played an important role in American religious life, offering people a more vivid experience of a “sacred reality” than do most organized religions. His fascinating and sympathetic look at this thriving, and peculiarly American, mode of religion will interest a wide range of readers interested in American religious, cultural, and medical history.

Other healers : unorthodox medicine in America

Notes:

• Nine scholars examine the history of social dynamics of alternative health practices in this country. Editor Gevitz provides a historical and theoretical overview, followed by essays on botanical, health reform, and water-cure movements, homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic, Christian Science, divine healing, and contemporary folk medicine. Admirably nonpolemical, this book will be of interest to scholars in medical history, sociology, and anthropology; American and women’s studies (the water cure having feminist connections); and folklore.

Blessed events : religion and home birth in America

American physicians in the nineteenth century : from sects to science

Christian Science on Trial: Religious Healing in America

Tags:

• Christian Science
• History
• Law and legislation
• Medical care
• Medicine
• Religious aspects
• United States

A Philosophical Examination of the History and Values of Western Medicine

Tags:

• Delivery of Health Care
• Ethics, Medical
• History
• Medical ethics
• Medicine
• Philosophy
• Philosophy, Medical
• Religion and Medicine

Notes:

• The study’s central thesis is that medicine reflects better than any other discipline the ethical crises of our age and that these are the natural result of the schism between “facts” and “values” brought about at the time of the scientific revolution. It offers a brief introduction to the philosophical history of medicine, argues that current ethical theory rests upon a fallacy of abstraction, calls for a more realistic appraisal of ethical responsibility, and challenges the notion that ethics is necessarily more “subjective” than science. The work goes on to examine the role of ethics in medical education, managing ethical issues in health-care delivery systems, medical economics, abortion, and sexually transmissible diseases, giving special attention to the realities of ethical responsibility in each case.

The Body of Compassion: Ethics, Medicine, and the Church

Tags:

• Bioethics
• Christian ethics
• Christianity
• Ethics, Medical
• Health
• Human body
• Medical ethics
• Religion and Medicine
• Religious aspects

Health and medicine in the Anglican tradition : conscience, community, and compromise

The social transformation of American medicine

Notes:

• Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care system of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs has evolved over the last two centuries.

The therapeutic perspective : medical practice, knowledge, and identity in America, 1820-1885

Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America

Tags:

• 20th century
• Alternative medicine
• History
• United States

Notes:

• Esteemed medical historian Dr. James C. Whorton seeks to bring light to the flourishing of complementary and alternative medicine and provide its rich historical context in Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America. Whorton packs his book with historical information, primary research, detailed analysis, and the occasional apt poem to blend the diverse sections together into a comprehensive textbook that is both illuminating and accessible. It is a treasure for anyone, scholarly or not, who wants to learn about CAM, its history, and its place within American culture. While he seems to have fun with some of the more peculiar aspects of alternative medicine and its history, Whorton has a strong sympathy with the underlying worldview of CAM.

Mesmerized : powers of mind in Victorian Britain