MEDICAL MATTERS:Should our medicine be influenced by religious beliefs, either our own or those of our doctors?
SHOULD GOD be part of medicine? Are spiritual beliefs relevant to our health? These are big questions with no easy answers.
Dr Francis S Collins is the new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), one of the biggest jobs in US healthcare. He is a passionate believer in God. And he is the author of a bestseller, The Language of God: A scientist presents evidence for belief.
In the book he describes how, as a young doctor, a woman with severe heart disease and a poor prognosis asked him about his religious beliefs.
He didn’t have any, but went away to investigate the question of whether there is a God. Some years later he not only decided God exists, but became somewhat evangelical in his new found belief.
Wearing the badge of religion so obviously has led to some criticism of Dr Collins by scientists in the US. They are concerned that his beliefs could interfere with important decisions concerning the funding of research into areas such as stem cell therapy and therapeutic cloning.
Collins has responded by saying he has no religious agenda for the NIH.
The current issue of Irish Psychiatrist looks at the issue of spirituality in a different context.
Prof Harold Koenig, professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina, asks “Can a spiritual life help us in the world: implications for mental health”.
He points out that religious belief can be both a hindrance and a help in patients with psychological problems. Those with psychosis may have religious delusions, while rigidly held beliefs can lead to unhealthy guilt in vulnerable people.
But religion can be helpful in assisting people cope with fear, loneliness and social isolation.
A major European study found a direct link between religious attendance and rates of depression.
Analysis of a sub-sample of 662 people from Dublin found that regular religious attendance was correlated with an 80 per cent lower likelihood of depression.
The effect was much stronger than that seen in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
Koenig says psychiatrists should take a full spiritual history – gathering information about religious experiences, both good and bad. He calls for specific teaching of trainee psychiatrists in spiritual factors that can influence mental health.
“Neither psychiatrists in training nor those in active practice can afford to ignore the religious or spiritual beliefs of patients,” he concludes.
In the past, spiritual belief played a major part in folk medicine.
Patrick Logan's book Irish Folk Medicinehas just been republished by Appletree Press; it contains many examples of how religion mixed freely with pagan beliefs to produce a "cure".
A bishop’s skull features in a cure for whooping cough in Cavan and Meath. According to Logan, three skulls were found under the altar of a church in the northeast.
One of these, reputedly the skull of a bishop, was filled with water. Children with whooping cough were brought from miles around to drink from it; apparently no child treated in this way ever died from the disease.
St Martin is central to an old cure for bleeding. Apparently it was the custom to kill a cock on his feast day (November 11th) and to sprinkle the bird’s blood at the door.
Some of the blood was allowed fall on a cloth which was then carefully stored in the rafters of the home. During the following year, the cloth was taken out and used to treat bleeding from wounds.
Treating sore eyes involved bathing them in the water of certain holy wells. St Brigid’s wells in Mulhuddart, Co Dublin and Ballyheigue in Co Kerry are among many still used as a “cure” for sore eyes.
Which brings me to a personal experience with eyes and holy water.
At a family baptism some years ago, the visiting priest found himself without access to holy water. Luckily the ceremony was able to go ahead after we found a bottle of blessed water behind the altar.
Unfortunately, 48 hours later the newly baptised child couldn’t open his eyes, such was the amount of puss gluing his eyelids together.
The severe conjunctivitis eventually responded to scientific intervention with antibiotic drops.
Ever since, I have wondered if this constituted an “anti-cure” in the traditions of Irish folk medicine.
- mhouston@irishtimes.com