Pain and suffering

brings added value to the study of pain and suffering? For teachers like me who are planning to co-teach a course on religion and medicine, in my case to students from Harvard Medical School and from Harvard Divinity School, this collection is a step forward, but it would have been more helpful if it had set up an ongoing dialogue between its two parts, forcing scholars who are comfortable analysing either medical or religious materials to have to confront both together in a critical inquiry on pain and suffering as simultaneously medical and religious phenomena. Dominik Wujastyk begins to get at this issue in his chapter on demonic vengeance in classical Indian medicine, as do Helen King in her solid review of medicine and religion in the ancient world, Carole Rawcliffe on medicine for the soul in medieval England, and Mike Saks on the religious aspects of alternative medicine. These efforts at interaction, which are limited, only contribute to the sense that, in spite of world-class individual contributors, a larger and to my mind less usual opportunity has been missed.