Year 10 post your homework here please – based on today’s lesson, past lessons and your own knowledge, write a convincing paragraph giving your answer to:
Has religion helped or hindered medical progress? Explain.
Try to prove your point with examples, and then explain how that point made medicine progress or regress. Any questions or problems, please let me know at school.
Miss A
Bishop Justus History 
In some ways, religion did help medicine progress. The Church was a very large and very powerful organisation, and if the Church approved of medical ideas, they could spread like wildfire. Galen wrote that the body was designed to perfection, with every part having a specific function, which demonstrated the Christian belief that God is the mighty, infallible creator of all things. For hundreds of years after his death, his ideas were used. Schools at monasteries taught monks a lot about medicine, and as people came to them to be cured, experience – and therefore more knowledge – was gained in the process. Islam greatly helped the spread of medicine in the Middle East, as Islamic scholars thought that if Allah had created evil such as disease, He would have created a cure for them as well. In these ways, medicine was one of the greatest factors towards medical progress.
Religion hasn’t always been helpful to medicine. The counter-action of approving Galen’s work was that it became almost impossible for other great doctors to get their work noticed. Vesalius’ book ‘On the fabric of the human body’ was very controversial at the time of its publish. The Church’s negative views about dissection of human bodies made it very difficult for surgeons to gain pre-occupational experience or knowledge of anatomy, vital to their work. The view that disease was a punishment from God didn’t help medicine either – some people were convinced that the patient should be left to suffer, and should not have efforts wasted on them in vain. This was religion at its least co-operative.
‘Love your neighbour’ was one of the commands Jesus left to the world. Since its birth, the Christian religion has tried to show this order through actions. Medicine is a wonderful example of this. People have misinterpreted the word of their God, and maybe acted without correct thought, but this religion has always been there for the weak and suffering. Jesus himself went out of his way to heal people, and this example has inspired generations after to fight against disease and sickness. Many great doctors have been Christians, and without them, God knows what would have happened!
Comment by Peter — November 27, 2008 @ 7:11 pm |
I think religion (whose rules/laws made up the cuntries rules) hindered medicine because they would not allow dissection which is how vesalius poved many things – illegally. The church also teached that God would cure everything so it restricted people to test new medicine or thoeries as they were expected to pray to cure themselves.
Comment by Sam =P — November 28, 2008 @ 5:20 pm |
woooo i was the fist one … i think
=P =)
Comment by Sam =P — November 28, 2008 @ 5:22 pm |
Yes, Religion has hindered progress in medicine.
An example of this is that it was the church that banned dissection on human bodies and therefore slowed human understanding about how the human body is made up.
(I currently have writer’s block and can’t think of much more to add without my trusty folder(!))
Comment by Emz — November 28, 2008 @ 9:13 pm |
Thanks for getting the ball rolling – I have allowed comment 4 but need to remind you that all comments must have your own, proper, first name!
What about the Reformation? (we studied it in the fire alarm lesson!) – how did that change the control the Church had?
Look forward to more comments
Miss A
Comment by bishopjustushistory — November 29, 2008 @ 9:32 am |
In some ways religion has hindered medicine because the Church believed that God caused and cured disease. The Church also banned dissection because they used the work of Galen and didn’t accept work of others. However, if the Church hadn’t banned dissection, Versalius wouldn’t have made his discoveries.
The reformation was when Henry VIII decided to divorce Catherine of Aragon. His problem was that the Roman Catholic Church didn’t allow it. He created the Church of England run by him. He went around burning all the catholic churches and schools. This had the effect that people could do more experiments which the catholic Church had not allowed.
My Dad thinks that it’s interesting that even today some religious groups in the USA have been able to persuade president George Bush to limit stem cell research. Barak Obama has already said he will lift these restrictions.
Comment by George B — November 29, 2008 @ 12:40 pm |
Um, well I think Religion has hindered medical progress because the Church forbade medical research; such as dissecting bodies, so if people can’t do medical research, how are they meant to come up with new cures for illnesses and diseases? Also, as they wouldn’t be able to dissect the body, their lack of knowledge would hinder the progress in medicine.. They would just have to rely on Vesalius as they weren’t able to discover stuff for themselves.
Because people believed God would cure them and all they had to do was pray.. they wouldn’t have searched for new ways to cure themselves, they would have just waited for God to “heal” them.
Comment by Yasmin =) — November 29, 2008 @ 2:10 pm |
Religion has helped medicine progress in the reformation period in some ways mainly because of the introducement of the protestant religion. This changed ideas of purgatory, now there was no belief of this and instead they new that the ‘soul’ would have gone straight to either ‘hell’ or ‘heaven’. This then suggested that the body was not needed to pray for so it was no longer important in there eyes. This then allowed dissection on the corpses. As a organisation the church had objects like paintings and symbolic signs. This could have made the idea of idols or charms weren’t important and that they couldn’t cure you.
Another matter which was not as important was the Priests they were allowed to become married, more other things made these priests not important which then lead to the idea that no one was first and that we were all equal, therefore touching someone would not cure you. This proved the idea on the ‘Kings Death cure’ was wrong. The strong belief in the catholic religion was that if you blessed wine or bread it would really be ‘Jesus’ blood and body’. However the protestant said that it was just a symbol for it and it was not real. This shows that this new side of Christianity had a big impact and especially on medicine. Islam which is a religion which also had a impact on medicine as many ideas from Arabia to do with medicine helped like new resources and other religious theories like if ‘Allah had created a disease there would have been a cure’ The religion also supported to look after the sick which allowed new universities or libraries to open about medicine.
In several ways religion would have hindered medicine, this is because everyone followed the church mostly and would listen to them. This could have changed the rate of amount of individuals being brave and finding new ideas other that the church. They did think that only God can cause and cure dieses which meant that they had lack of knowledge on how we get ill and what was the reason for it. This hindered the chance of many developments on theories on cures that reason on how we get diseased.
In conclusion, i think that religion has not hindered religion it to a quite high extent. The reason for my answer is that the Reformation time had changed the thoughts towards medicine because of the religion protestant. They did many things to help medicine which stated in my first paragraph. They also translated the Bible in to many languages other than Latin. This allowed people to interpret it and to think for themselves. However you can say that it did hinder medicine, I agree with that as well because many other theories could have appeared other than just religious ones, which can be wrong.
BY OMAR BAZARA words: 477 Topic: Did religion help or hinder medicine
Comment by OMAR CORPERATION — November 29, 2008 @ 3:22 pm |
No yasmin think your wrong. because in the reformation time the religion protestant came so it meant that they said no pugatry and new the soul was gone so they didnt need the body. This allowed them to disect on it
Comment by OMAR CORPERATION — November 29, 2008 @ 4:42 pm |
Omar this isnt meant 2 be a debate on here.. what r u doing?!?!?
Comment by Yasmin =) — November 29, 2008 @ 4:44 pm |
And anyway they needed 2 disect the body 4 surgery and stuff
Comment by Yasmin =) — November 29, 2008 @ 4:46 pm |
yhh i know u dunce… they did disect in the end because there was no Pugatry and u said i quote ‘Church forbade medical research; such as dissecting bodies, so if people can’t do medical research, how are they meant to come up with new cures for illnesses and diseases?’ so your saying the didnt disect when they did at this period.
Comment by OMAR CORPERATION — November 29, 2008 @ 4:49 pm |
they did forbade dissection of the body.. thats what everyone has put and it’s right
Comment by Yasmin =) — November 29, 2008 @ 4:51 pm |
Hey Guys , i think that the catholic church hindered medical changes however the new protestant church helped move medical ideas forward .
The catholic church didnt allow dissection because of the belief that the body has to be perfect and ready to go to purgatory. As we all know this was a huge problem for medicine just as it was in egyptian times.
However when the protesants came along there beliefs and new ideas where able to allow medicine to grow.They believed that the priest werent any more important than the congregation and could get married. People therefor instead of touching the king to heal them started looking for diffrent cures.Dissection was alowed as purgatory was banned.
So i guess it depends on wich way you look at things. Looking at the catholics then yes religion did hinder relgion but looking at the prosetants it incouraged medicine.
Jess =)
Comment by Jessica — November 29, 2008 @ 4:52 pm |
sorry there are a few spelling mistakes and stuff lol 🙂
Comment by Jessica — November 29, 2008 @ 4:56 pm |
debates are excellent – they’re exactly what History is about! Just to clarify, dissection was banned, but started to be allowed in universities (eg Padua) from about 1300 – so more dissection was happening before the Reformation, but the Reformation did make it easier to express and spread (remember the printing press) new ideas.
Keep ’em coming
Miss A
Comment by bishopjustushistory — November 29, 2008 @ 5:40 pm |
I think that religion hindered medicine because you weren’t allowed to do disections on humans and this caused confusion, like when Galen thought that the jaw awas made up of two partts but it was really made up of just one. Also because they believed in God they always prayed to be cured which most of the times probably didn’t work.
Comment by Ola — November 29, 2008 @ 6:30 pm |
I think that religion did hinder some medical break through’s, for example people weren’t allowed to dissect human bodies so they didn’t know where very thing went, Jehovah witness don’t believe in blood transfusions or other things that could save your life because they think that when something that could kill happens it is your time to die.People just prayed to God to get healed instead of trying to get themselves well again.
Comment by Hannah crawford — November 30, 2008 @ 7:39 pm |
I agree with jessica that the catholic church hindered medicine but that the protestent helped medicine. The catholic church beleived that the priests were not human and therefore could heal people which was not true. The Protestents banned purgatory which allowed people to surgery on dead bodys as people thought they had all ready gone to heaven or hell. But they both prayed to be healed insted of finding a cause to the disease.
Comment by Ryan — November 30, 2008 @ 8:13 pm |
I think that religion has sort of hindered medicine because you weren’t allowed to dissect body’s, because that meant you had to dissect animals that have a totally different to humans, like galen proved that animals jaws have 2 bones and the human jaw was actually made up of one bone. Also people who believed in religion thought that praying to the gods would cure them of their illness because they thought if they had sinned then the gods would punish them in that way, the praying would not of made them any better.
The Catholic church thought that the body needed to be in tip top shape to move on into heaven after they had died, so they didn’t allow dissection (i think :S)
Lauren..=D
Comment by Lauren — November 30, 2008 @ 8:23 pm |
Err… sorry for not using my ‘proper’ name. But I’m not used to using Emily when online…
I vaguely remember it but like I said I don’t have my folder to refresh my memory and I feel like I’m missing my left arm as a result (:
Comment by Emily — November 30, 2008 @ 8:30 pm |
In my opinion medicine has been hindered by religion because people believed in the gods and would rather go to church to be treated. Instead of going to village doctors who had made important discoveries. This in the long term made doctors less willing to try hard and discover new medicines because they knew that most of the public would not use their treatments. I think that this is a prime example of religion hindering the progress of medicine
Comment by Daniel — December 1, 2008 @ 8:25 am |
In my opinion it has hindered it by making people search for supernatrual cures rather then searching for viable ones,or using the current ones ,But it could have improved it by making docters want to try harder to make better cures so people would come to them and not god
Comment by Thomas.S — December 2, 2008 @ 8:23 am |
I think that religion has hindered medical progress because for example the catholic church wouldn’t let surgeons dissect human bodies. The consequence of this that people will not be able to understand the human body example of this is that Galen believed that the jaw was made of 3 bones.
But some people like learnado da vinchi defied the Christian church.
All in all I believe that religion has hindered medical progress.
P.S I don’t know how to spell his name
Comment by George coshall — December 2, 2008 @ 10:28 pm |
In my opinion, i believe that religion hindered the development of medicine because they would never disect a body after the person had died to find the cause of death. They believed this because once a person had died, they belived the person would go on to a second life after death. This hindered their development as this stopped them from getting a closer look into the body and finding out what caused death.
However, i believe religion helped develop medicine as local bishops of the villages in the medieval times would give people licenses the become midwives & surgeons. This meant certain people had permission to go on and practise medicine meaning they could find reasons of death & illness & also ways to cure certain illnesses.
In conclusion, i believe that medicina hindered & helped medicine to develop but i believe it would of developed better if they didnt believe in such things as the after life as this held them back from progressing medicine to where it is today. 🙂
Comment by Becca — December 3, 2008 @ 12:01 pm |
Plus, as the Romans invaded Greece; which was now a part of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire converted to Christianity. Romans believed that many events were signs from God.
Well, you see although, the Romans were practical people; who believed in natural, logical and practical ideas. Religious belief wasn’t really a practical thing.
So would it have really affected the medical progress of the Romans?
Comment by Rani — November 24, 2009 @ 8:35 pm |
You need to look at this in a much more balanced way for GCSE History so that you have the ability to argue either way, religion had both pros and cons throughout medicine
Pros –
Nuns and monks set up monasteries in the same way that asclepions were set up to care for the sick (no matter how much they stole)
Mummification allowed for anatomical knowledge however the religion also held them back in terms of them being limited with their exploration
Cons –
People would be happy without knowing the cause of disease and just blaming it on Sinning
It did at one point ban dissection however that then came back again during the renaissance
Religion often didn’t approve of research methods
Galen had to be specific with wording his discoveries so that muslims and christians would be happy with them ( He refers a lot to a creator)
There are many more, but if you write up a list like this it makes essay writing much easier 🙂
Comment by Billie — February 25, 2012 @ 2:47 pm |