Faith and Medicine

Faith Healing Confronts Modern Medicine

This is the second of a 3-part series analyzing a recent report in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine claiming to have shown positive results (a 100% increase in pregnancies from in vitro fertilization) resulting from distant prayers performed simultaneously by 3 different volunteer prayer groups in 3 different countries. Part 1 analyzed the scientific defects of the study. Part 2 analyzes th...

Professing faith, professing medicine: Physicians and the call to evangelize.

THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH TRADITIONALLY ESTABLISHES MEDICINE AS A PROFESSION: A career, or vocation based on the professing of an oath regarding personal and public behavior. For Catholic physicians, the commitments of the Oath of Hippocrates take on new meaning when seen in light of the promises made at Baptism and renewed every Easter. This paper, originally an address to medical students, conside...

The elements of medicine: faith, hope and credence.

till I have worked up my patients into a confidence bordering upon certainty, of their probable good effects.” William Osler, the most prominent physician of the 20th Century, remarked: “Faith in us, faith in our drugs and methods, is the great stock in trade of the profession.” In Osler’s iconic textbook (which has guided medical students for over four generations), he said that three factors ...

dEfininG faitH and faitH PraCtiCES

recent studies demonstrate an overlapping relationship between faith practices of individuals, family functioning, and the corporate faith of congregations. this study reports on the psychometric properties of the Christian faith Practices Scale (CfPS), which was created to empirically measure dykstra’s faith behaviors or “practices.” analysis of a large purposive sample (n=7,403) indicates ini...

Faith, Hope and Doubt