Medicine and culture : proceedings of a historical symposium organized jointly by the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, London, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York / edited by F.N.L. Poynter.

Date:
1969
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Medicine and culture : proceedings of a historical symposium organized jointly by the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, London, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York / edited by F.N.L. Poynter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    College and when he was 19 he revolted against Calvinism, what he called 'this terrible creed' which consigned the greater part of mankind to eternal damnation. He became a Unitarian and, fired by the belief that the sinner must eventually be redeemed - for eternal punishment was senseless - he came to consider ways and means of redeeming the sinner in this life. He investigated the causes of disease and crime and saw that both sprang from poverty and he argued, along religious lines, that there was no divine law which made this necessary, any more than it did eternal punishment. We could, and should, act to alleviate the lot of the miserable, to prevent disease and to rehabilitate the criminal - and it is interesting to note that 150 years ago he said that prisons should be 'hospitals of the mind'. There is another model which combines the most up-to-date work on some aspects of space medicine with Christian writings more than a thousand years old. This fascinating and extraordinary work is being done by a London neurologist who has also made a study of the Coptic language. Professionally interested in the problem of sensory deprivation, the symptoms of which could be troublesome to space travellers, she sought about for clinical material and then recalled that the accounts of the Coptic saints and hermits comprised a very substantial body of 'case records' of just such phenomena. Their pious practice was to have themselves bricked up in small cells, stand up to their necks in water for long periods, or sit in dark caves. In the last two or three seasons Dr. MacDermot has visited Egypt and Nubia and on talking to Coptic churchmen there she finds that oral tradition has preserved these accounts with very little corruption and that some of these practices were still followed until modern times. The results of her research will be published in a year or two. Here then we have two examples of the interaction between Medicine and religion which I would have mentioned in the discussion yesterday if it had not been cut short. I must not keep you any longer now, but I should like to express, for the record, my gratitude to each one of you for your contribution to the undoubted success of this conference. For me it has been an unusually interesting and stimulating experience. chairman : Thank you. The final item on the agenda is entitled 'Chairman's concluding remarks'. It has been for me a great privilege to chair this symposium and I have learned a great deal from it under two main headings. The first is how the different cultures are related in the practice of medicine, that is largely a socio- historical study. The second is how the practice of medicine is affecting the culture of different societies and peoples. This is social,