EXCERPTS:

Monastic Medicine: Monastic medicine developed during the middle ages and was provided as part of a religious duty. Those living the monastic life are known by the generic terms monks (men) and nuns (women). Saint Fabiola was the first person on record to have found a Christian hospital in the late 4th century, into which she gathered sufferers out of the streets, and where she nursed the unfortunate victims of sickness and want. A member of a wealthy Roman family, Fabiola became a Christian ascetic, selling all her belongings and founding the first hospital in the Western world as we know it today.

The Rule of St Benedict states that "before and above all things, care must be taken of the sick, that they be served in the very truth as Christ is served." Virtually every monastery had an infirmary for the monks or nuns, and this led to provision being made for the care of outside patients. Almost half of the hospitals in medieval Europe were directly affiliated with monasteries, priories of the Knightly Orders or other religious institutions and hospices. Most of the religious communities formulated precise rules of conduct, required a uniform type of dress, and integrated worship services into their daily routine.

Monastic Medicine can be defined as: charitable medical services rendered to the poor using natural agents such as food, herbs, and water; and supernatural agents including spiritual counseling, prayer, divination, worship, fasting, and exorcism.

Monastic medicine had flourished both in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches from earliest Christian times to the Reformation, being reformed and renewed periodically by dynamic individuals with new emphases or departures from current medical practices. With the rise of the universities after the renaissance, the monastic control of education came to an end. Luther liberated Europe with the Reformation and in England allowed members of clergy to marry. Doctors in the clergy would now be referred to as clerical physicians and monastic vows were no longer required.

Clerical Medicine: The last vestiges of monastic medicine, transforming itself into protestant clerical medicine, played out during the time of Shakespeare in London. The Elizabethan era, considered the height of the English renaissance, inherited traditions of folk medicine, while many simpler notions and practices derived from learned sources had found their way into popular literature and become part of common speech. Clerical medicine represented an important transitional period in the history between medieval monastic medicine of Christendom and naturopathy (natural medicine) during which medicine and religion still uniquely coexisted. The ability for pastors to practice medicine in this religious context was based on the subordination (licensure) to the predominant realm of Anglican Church established by Henry VIII and was fostered by the recognized doctrine that the effectiveness of physical medicine was possible only because of this spiritual link as the religious basis for physical treatments.

It was the Imitation of Christ and the Primitive (early) Christians of the "purest ages" who inspired and encouraged the Anglican leader, John Wesley, to create a lasting movement based on his vision of the ancient Church. John Wesley (1703-1791) became the founder of Methodism. His religious movement, subsequently gave rise to numerous separate denominations, and would spread to the new world, and the thirteen colonies. "Justification by Faith," was a doctrine that was central to the developing Methodist movement. Utilizing those cardinal Christian virtues of prayer, temperance, and almsgiving, Wesley saw that the good and holy life, Imitatio Christi, demanded an active faith, combined with a duty to God and one's neighbor. His strong emphasis upon visiting the sick and providing medical advice and treatment to poorer members of society was to him a fundamental Christian principle, and central to its history and doctrine.

Wesley wrote his medical manual, Primitive Physic (1747), out of an absolute necessity to provide medicine to the poor. Yet it was also the case that Primitive Physic fitted into a much wider context and was characteristic of a growing religious movement that placed a high premium on social and medical action. This social action sprang from an active faith, undertaken in Christ's name, but informed by those shining examples of the early Christians who attempted to achieve pristine purity in the form of physical and spiritual health. The Methodist movement was, observes M. Schmidt, a "socially concerned Christianity," and the aim of this movement clearly involved medical practice.

In Wesley's time the causes of disease had been imperfectly understood, but there had been a strong belief in empiric "certain cures" and "tried remedies". Wesley had developed a reasoned view of which remedies were harmful, and was a thoughtful prescriber, feeling the need for treatment of the whole person. Wesley himself had claimed that men of learning had begun to set aside experience, to build on hypothesis, to form theories of diseases and their cure, and to submit these in the place of practical physics. As a firm believer in empiricism, Wesley had claimed that there was no more need for mystery in medicine than to appreciate the simple fact that "such a medicine removes such a pain" and should be used. The best physician, in Wesley's view, was not the one who talked best or who wrote best, but the one who performed the most cures, the one who walked the talk.

Clerical Medicine became the basis of natural medicine practice to which we owe Wesley a large and significant contribution. It could be claimed that he was one of our Fathers of Naturopathy. It can be thus be defined as: charitable medical services (Imitatio Christi) rendered to the poor using natural agents such as food, herbs, electricity, physic, water; "certain cures" and "tried remedies"; and supernatural agents including spiritual counseling, prayer, divination, and worship.

Pastoral Medicine: It was at all times a recognized by the Church that the pastor who devotes his work to the care of the soul, should take into consideration its habitation: the body and mind, and, consequently, should not be without a certain amount of medical skills and knowledge. The first solid reference to emerging pastoral medicine we find in Carl Franz Nicolaus Capellmann's PASTORAL MEDICINE, published in 1879. Our next reference of import is Pastoral Medicine, A Handbook for the Catholic Clergy by ALEXANDER E. SANFORD, M.D. 1904. It was not the purpose of Pastoral Medicine to induce the priest to take upon himself the full task of practicing as a physician or surgeon; but undertook to enable him to advise and caution, to treat by hygienic and dietetic measures, to render immediate aid in case of injury or trauma, and to protect his or her congregation against disease.

In the Middle Ages practically the only centers of learning were the monasteries. Here all the knowledge of the time was taught and all the studies carried on, so that under the same roof the theologians, the chemist, the artist, and the inventor sat side by side, and consequently each drew from and modified the study and practice of the other. In England, the dissolution of the monasteries changed this order, and though the Church Reformations and the Renaissance, for a time obscured the loss to society of clerical medicine in general, while both religion and medicine drifted into distinct circumscribed professions. The dawn of the nineteenth century saw an enormous revival of interest and study in both directions, but the new found energy with which the two spheres of learning were pushed forward, proved in the end inimical to the interests of clerical medicine, for religion and renaissance medicine found themselves carried farther and farther apart.

The dawn of the nineteenth century saw an enormous interest in natural therapeutics. Samuel Hahnemann would re-examine the Materia Medica of the day and set about discovering a system of medicine known as Homeopathy which by the mid-1800's, homeopaths in the U.S. would out number their kindred opponents in regular medicine. The medical historian William Rothstein acknowledged that "early American homeopaths were all well educated and cultured physicians… and manifested an erudition rarely found in regular medical journals of the period".

John Wesley (1704-1791) pioneered the use of 'physic' and electricity for the treatment of illness. In common with many other Anglican clergymen of the times, Wesley felt a compulsion, obligation, and duty to practice physic (natural medicine). The principle of pastoral care was strong in both the Puritan and Anglican traditions and such practices spread to the America's often being referred to as 'clerical medicine.' Father Kneipp practised the water cure, as modified by himself. In 1854 he became known as the 'cholera vicar' as a result of saving many lives in a village epidemic. His growing fame led to teaching others, including Benedict Lust, the ‘father’ of American naturopathy. Revered Sylvester Graham (1795-1851) was another Christian practitioner of nature cure as well as having invented and becoming famous for his Graham Crackers in 1829. Graham was a Presbyterian minister and avid vegetarian, who delivered lectures on the relationship between diet and disease. Graham had many devoted followers, known as Grahamites, who followed his principles, which included temperance, sexual restraint, and baths, in addition to vegetarianism.

In our view, pastoral medicine is the sum of those explanations -anatomical-physiological, as well as pathological-therapeutical, and the principles of nature cure; a knowledge of which is necessary for the priest in the exercise of his or her pastoral duties and functions. In regard to anatomy and physiology, it without doubt very useful for every intelligent man and woman of council to have some knowledge of bodily functions, in order to have a clearer idea how to live according to the laws of health and scripture. Health is the greatest of all possessions next to life, and it is only to be expected that every man and woman of faith should take a deep interest in whatever concerns health, its maintenance and recovery.

Pastoral Medicine can have much to do with the prevention and healing of common disorders, nearly as much as practiced by the medical profession. It undoubtedly helps in the prevention of sickness and in establishing proper hygienic conditions for the welfare of churches, schools, society and mankind. To be able to give the advice proper in such instances the priest should be trained with the fundamental principles of hygiene both socially and in the home.

Pastoral Medicine can also have much to do with the advise and council on diet, in the prevention of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, today ravaging the world's population with the medical profession at a loss of any effective cures. The Bible is specific on its instructions on diet and health.

Many countries today warn of future shortages of doctors, making clergy a logical resource in the immediate future. The world health report 2006 - working together for health - has brought renewed attention to the global human resources required to produce health. It estimated that 57 countries have an absolute shortage of 4.3 million physicians, nurses and midwives.

Pastoral Medicine can be defined as: application and use of the health sciences for the purpose of applying them in pastoral functions and in the explanation and support of the teachings of faith and morals. Pastoral Medicine has for its object the prevention and treatment of contagious disease, somatic illness, mental disease, nervous disorders; disease due to occupation, drug addiction; and rendering first aid to the injured.