Tag: faith
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Faith in medicine
Tyler Beauchamp Augusta, Georgia, United States Photo by Sven Piper on Unsplash. When I was in college, I worked for a nursing unit in the trauma ward. One patient had been in a horrible car accident and barely survived. I visited her for the better part of two weeks before she began to improve.…
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Faith and patron saints during the Black Death
Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta Saint Roch. 1502. Francesco Francia. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain. The Black Death of 1348 was the greatest biomedical disaster in European history. Although it was not the first plague epidemic, the Black Death swept through Europe, killing millions indiscriminately and affecting society like no other natural calamity.1 Attempts to understand the…
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The sanctity of blood: Jehovah’s Witnesses and bloodless medicine
Margo A. PeytonBaltimore, Maryland, United States Tammy said that her throat looked like that of a bullfrog croaking on an August night. At her local emergency room, her blood pressure was 240/40 mmHg due to profound aortic valve insufficiency complicated by an aortic aneurysm. Her condition necessitated high-risk cardiac surgery, a procedure that carries the…
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A happy individual knows nothing
Basil Brooke Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Socrates and his students. Seljuk manuscript, early 13th century. Mubashshir ibn Fātik. Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul It seems that most people, most of the time, tend to avoid the really big questions, the hows and whys of existence, preferring to wait and see what happens when they die.…