Religion and Medicine

Throughout history almost every religion has used medicine to promote its faith, and each religion has a distinct view of disease and approaches to treatment. Believers often seek religious guidance to help cope with diseases. Although medical practitioners tend to see religious medicine as no more than superstition, patients themselves nevertheless regard medicine backed by religious belief as an effective measure to relieve anxiety and unease, or even strengthen confidence in their recovery, which is why many people, past and present, have chosen this path. This section presents medical discourses from such Buddhist and Taoist classics as Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra (The Golden Light Sutra) and Yunji Qiqian (Seven Tablets in a Cloudy Satchel), illustrations of folk religion and medicine in Shen zhou Huabao (Fiction Pictorial) and Tuhua Xinwen (The Pictorial News), as well as archival materials containing descriptions of medical activities practiced by followers of secret religions, to demonstrate the role of religion and spirituality in the history of medicine.