Today in class, we briefly discussed the medicinal practices of a certain sect of religion (maybe Christian science). The story that someone brought up was about a couple that did not supply medical care to their sixteen-year-old because of religious beliefs. They believed that the child could be cured if their faith was strong enough. Obviously, they were wrong. It's a shame that the child died, when a very simple cure was readily available. However, in a way, it makes sense when you look at other cultures. In my ethnicity class, we've been talking about Shamanism with Hmong Americans. The spiritual leader, the shaman, has a set of rituals that he practices on the inflicted to make them well again. Often times, the shaman has cured problems that even medicine could not seem to cure. We read a story about a woman who doctors thought would die. In an act of desperation the family requested a shaman to help. It took the shaman 8 hours to heal the woman, but it worked. I think that traditional medicine is a wonderful and powerful thing, but I think that a lot of it could be psychological. There have been many studies that prove the effectiveness of positive thinking and religion. However, there are also cases that traditional medicine can't help. Sometimes it's necessary to go to a medical doctor. In the ethnicity class reading, there was a story about a Hmong doctor who occasionally treated Hmong patients. The people he saw had had problems that they had neglected, problems that had steadily grown more serious over the years. The shaman could not heal everything. In reaction to both of these viewpoints, I would say that there needs to be a balance between the two; medicinal and religious healing.
I think that the couple whose child died were not completely in the wrong. I can understand their viewpoint; they truly believed that their faith could save their child. I think that positive/religious thinking can do wonders, but there is a point when hard medicine is required. Convincing people with traditional medicinal background, however, is a whole different story.
Picture:
Shaman venturing into the spirit world to regain the soul of the diseased person.
Link: explains shamanism and its importance in Hmong culture.
http://www.pbs.org/splithorn/shamanism.html
I agree. I think the mind is a sometimes forgotten wealth of powerful mental and phychological healing that often goes untapped. Even science has proven the "placebo effect" to have its own powers. I'm not in any way calling religion and faith the placebo effect, but merely finding a parallel between the two because of the clearly effective methods of mental healing.
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