There is a growing interest in studies that document the relationship between science and medicine - as ideas, practices, technologies and outcomes - across cultural, national, geographic terrain. Tibetan medicine is not only known as a scholarly medical tradition among other Asian medical systems, with many centuries of technological, clinical, and pharmacological innovation; it also survives today as a complex medical resource across many Asian nations - from India and Bhutan to Mongolia, Tibet (TAR) and China, Buryatia - as well as in Western Europe and the Americas. The contributions to this volume explore, in equal measure, the impacts of western science and biomedicine on Tibetan grounds - i.e., among Tibetans across China, the Himalaya and exile communities as well as in relation to globalized Tibetan medicine - and the ways that local practices change how such “science” gets done, and how this continually hybridized medical knowledge is transmitted and put into practice. As such, this volume contributes to explorations into the bi-directional flows of medical knowledge and practice.

Medicine, Religion, and Health: Where Science and Spirituality Meet will be the first title published in the new Templeton Science and Religion Series, in which scientists from a wide range of fields distill their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties. In this, the series' maiden volume, Dr. Harold G. Koenig, provides an overview of the relationship between health care and religion that manages to be comprehensive yet concise, factual yet inspirational, and technical yet easily accessible to nonspecialists and general readers. Focusing on the scientific basis for integrating spirituality into medicine, Koenig carefully summarizes major trends, controversies, and the latest research from various disciplines and provides plausible and compelling theoretical explanations for what has thus far emerged in this relatively young field of study. Medicine, Religion, and Health begins by defining the principal terms and then moves on to a brief history of religion's role in medicine before delving into the current state of research. Koenig devotes several chapters to exploring the outcomes of specific studies in fields such as mental health, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. The book concludes with a review of the clinical applications derived from the research. Koenig also supplies several detailed appendices to aid readers of all levels looking for further information. Medicine, Religion, and Health will shed new light on critical contemporary issues. They will whet readers' appetites for more information on this fascinating, complex, and controversial area of research, clinical activity, and widespread discussion. It will find a welcome home on the bookshelves of students, researchers, clinicians, and other health professionals in a variety of disciplines.

Explores the interplay of medicine and religion in Western societies. 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. Praise for Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity, by Gary B. Ferngren "This fine work looks forward as well as backward; it invites fuller reflection of the many senses in which medicine and religion intersect and merits wide readership."—JAMA "An important book, for students of Christian theology who understand health and healing to be topics of theological interest, and for health care practitioners who seek a historical perspective on the development of the ethos of their vocation."—Journal of Religion and Health

In modern societies the functional differentiation of medicine and religion is the predominant paradigm. Contemporary therapeutic practices and concepts in healing systems, such as Transpersonal Psychology, Ayurveda, as well as Buddhist and Anthroposophic medicine, however, are shaped by medical as well as religious or spiritual elements. This book investigates configurations of the entanglement between medicine, religion, and spirituality in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa. How do political and legal conditions affect these healing systems? How do they relate to religious and scientific discourses? How do therapeutic practitioners position themselves between medicine and religion, and what is their appeal for patients?

Though the current political climate might lead one to suspect that religion and medicine make for uncomfortable bedfellows, the two institutions have a long history of alliance. From religious healers and religious hospitals to religiously informed bioethics and research studies on the impact of religious and spiritual beliefs on physical and mental well-being, religion and medicine have encountered one another from antiquity through the present day. In Religion and Medicine, Dr. Jeff Levin outlines this longstanding history and the multifaceted interconnections between these two institutions. The first book to cover the full breadth of this subject, it documents religion-medicine alliances across religious traditions, throughout the world, and over the course of history. Levin summarizes a wide range of material in the most comprehensive introduction to this emerging field of scholarship to date.

Tracing the movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Schoepflin illuminates its struggle for existence against the efforts of organized American medicine to curtail its activities.".

Why is the idea of conflict between science and religion so popular in the public imagination? The “conflict thesis”—the idea that an inevitable and irreconcilable conflict exists between science and religion—has long been part of the popular imagination. In The Warfare between Science and Religion, Jeff Hardin, Ronald L. Numbers, and Ronald A. Binzley have assembled a group of distinguished historians who explore the origin of the thesis, its reception, the responses it drew from various faith traditions, and its continued prominence in public discourse. Several essays in the book examine the personal circumstances and theological idiosyncrasies of important intellectuals, including John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who through their polemical writings championed the conflict thesis relentlessly. Other essays consider what the thesis meant to different religious communities, including evangelicals, liberal Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Finally, essays both historical and sociological explore the place of the conflict thesis in popular culture and intellectual discourse today. Based on original research and written in an accessible style, the essays in The Warfare between Science and Religion take an interdisciplinary approach to question the historical relationship between science and religion. This volume, which brings much-needed perspective to an often bitter controversy, will appeal to scholars and students of the histories of science and religion, sociology, and philosophy. Contributors: Thomas H. Aechtner, Ronald A. Binzley, John Hedley Brooke, Elaine Howard Ecklund, Noah Efron, John H. Evans, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Frederick Gregory, Bradley J. Gundlach, Monte Harrell Hampton, Jeff Hardin, Peter Harrison, Bernard Lightman, David N. Livingstone, David Mislin, Efthymios Nicolaidis, Mark A. Noll, Ronald L. Numbers, Lawrence M. Principe, Jon H. Roberts, Christopher P. Scheitle, M. Alper Yalçinkaya

This book explores the cultural history of embryology in Tibet, in culture, religion, art and literature, and what this reveals about its medicine and religion. Filling a significant gap in the literature this is the first in-depth exploration of Tibetan medical history in the English language. It reveals the prevalence of descriptions of the development of the human body – from conception to birth – found in all forms of Tibetan religious literature, as well as in medical texts and in art. By analysing stories of embryology, Frances Garrett explores questions of cultural transmission and adaptation: How did Tibetan writers adapt ideas inherited from India and China for their own purposes? What original views did they develop on the body, on gender, on creation, and on life itself? The transformations of embryological narratives over several centuries illuminate key turning points in Tibetan medical history, and its relationship with religious doctrine and practice. Embryology was a site for both religious and medical theorists to contemplate profound questions of being and becoming, where topics such as pharmacology and nosology were left to shape secular medicine. The author argues that, in terms of religion, stories of human development comment on embodiment, gender, socio-political hierarchy, religious ontology, and spiritual progress. Through the lens of embryology, this book examines how these concerns shift as Tibetan history moves through the formative 'renaissance' period of the twelfth through to the seventeenth centuries.

Throughout his long and distinguished career in medicine and neuroscience, Dr. Joseph B. Martin has had the honor of delivering speeches to graduating students, professional societies, and academic conferences. As both a lifelong Anabaptist and prominent member of the scientific community, his talks often focus on how to balance the spiritual and logical sides of our being to become healthier and more productive members of society. Collected here are several of Dr. Martin’s speeches from over more than fifty years as an academic and doctor. They reflect his evolving views on science and spirituality, and explore how that confluence is at the center of some of today’s most important and controversial issues. Interspersed with commentary to provide further context and reflection, the talks reflect the changes we have seen as a society deeply entrenched in technological advances and religious tensions. Through them, Dr. Martin helps us to understand both the world around us, and the world within.

This accessible and illuminating book explores the classical opposition between magic, science and religion.