Modern doubts about modern medicine and an ancient antidote
There is a certain tendency today to belittle or at times even despise modern medicine, especially the one usually termed “academic medicine“.
Heated discussions about the pros and cons of vaccinations for children are as commonplace now as turning from the ordinary academically trained physician to alternative healers, who seem to be in advantage just by putting some adjective like “Chinese“ or “natural“ in front of their offered healing methods.
There can be little doubt about the dangers and ethical frontier crossings of our highly engineered and industrialized modern medicine. But there is no return to paradisiacal innocence, and it seems to be contrary to both reason, intellectual sincereness and to a humble acknowledgement of our place in history as the fortunate heirs of the fruits of all the labors and sufferings of generations upon generations gone before us – and therefore as an affront to both prudence and justice – to revel in contempt for our modern medical system just to seek out the latest self-proclaimed healer who pledges to restore his clients, or victims, with the “wisdom of Mother Earth“ or the like. When the wisdom of the charlatans has ceased to be effective or has made things even worse, all the sick in their despair show up at the doors of the very same doctors whose work they could only view with skepticism before.
In an ordinary physician, who does not puff himself up like an almost god-like figure, people do not readily put their trust, no matter how much evidence there is of his solid training – but those who promise extraordinary cures or the most perfect conditions with the least amount of pain and travail they blindly follow. People moan that our modern health system has gotten way too expensive, but are willing and eager to feed all those alternative healers aside of the system with one money bill after the next one.
Yet all true wisdom does not come from below, from “Mother Earth“, but from above, from God Our Father in heaven. So we should turn to Sacred Scripture and dig for nuggets of wisdom there…
“Honour the physician for the need thou hast of him: for the most High hath created him. For all healing is from God, and he shall receive gifts of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be praised. The most High hath created medicines out of the earth, and a wise man will not abhor them. Was not bitter water made sweet with wood? The virtue of these things is come to the knowledge of men, and the most High hath given knowledge to men, that he may be honoured in his wonders. By these he shall cure and shall allay their pains, and of these the apothecary shall make sweet confections, and shall make up ointments of health, and of his works there shall be no end. For the peace of God is over all the face of the earth. My son, in thy sickness neglect not thyself, but pray to the Lord, and he shall heal thee. Turn away from sin and order thy hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all offence. Give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour, and make a fat offering, and then give place to the physician. For the Lord created him: and let him not depart from thee, for his works are necessary. For there is a time when thou must fall into their hands: And they shall beseech the Lord, that he would prosper what they give for ease and remedy, for their conversation. He that sinneth in the sight of his Maker, shall fall into the hands of the physician.“
Sirach 38: 1-15
Sickness and health in context
Sacred Scripture puts everything that concerns our human lives in the context of the relationship between God and man. There is nothing in our lives that does not also relate to our Creator and to our relationship with Him. In a biblical understanding of the world and our lives, sickness, health, and medicine are to be seen inside this framework, too, and we find this disclosed to us in this little passage quoted above and taken from the book of Jesus Sirach, which in the Church’s tradition is also known under the title Ecclasiasticus.
Joshua ben Sirach was a Jewish scribe and sage who lived in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. His book is a wisdom book, a book for teaching his students religious and ethical precepts. The original version of it was written in Hebrew, but the only full script that still exists is a Greek translation.
And what do we learn from these words of the wisdom teacher Joshua ben Sirach?
We are told that sickness and physical infirmities might befall us on account of our sins, on account of our main sin of not worshipping God our Creator duely.
“He that sinneth in the sight of his Maker, shall fall into the hands of the physician.“
Sirach 38: 15
We find several examples thereof throughout Sacred Scripture, for instance when Miriam, who grumbled against Moses, gets afflicted with leprosy. Certainly, sin and moral guilt are not the only causes of sickness. As Mike Aquilina writes in his book The Healing Imperative. The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine As We Know It,
“It‘s true that God may send sickness as a punishment, but we can‘t assume when we see a sick man that God is punishing him.“
Mike Aquilina, The Healing Imperative. The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine As We Know It, Emmaus Road Publishing, p. 19
And maybe we can replace the word “punishment“ in our minds with the words “chastisement“ or “correction“ – and remember that God‘s justice is His mercy. When chained to a bed in sickness, we are given a lot of time to think about ourselves and our lives – and there and then we might become ready to repent and to return to the Divine Healer.
While sickness might be a direct chastisement from God who allows it to happen in order to correct us, healing and health definitely are His gift, something to be thankful for: “all healing is from God“ (Sirach 38: 2), Joshua ben Sirach tells us, and summons the one who is sick to “pray to the Lord, and He shall heal thee“ (Sirach 38: 9).
It is also clear from Sacred Scripture, that sickness and misery might plague a righteous man – a righteous man like Job, like Tobit. In the case of the compassionate and clear-sighted Tobit, his very deeds of mercy – of burying the dead – bring him into a situation causing a malady of the eyes…
“Now it happened one day, that being wearied with burying, he came to his house, and cast himself down by the wall and slept, and as he was sleeping, hot dung out of a swallow’s nest fell upon his eyes, and he was made blind. Now this trial the Lord therefore permitted to happen to him, that an example might be given to posterity of his patience, as also of holy Job.“
Tobit 2: 10-12
In a slightly different transcript of the book of Tobit, we read, concerning this infirmity, the following words uttered by Tobit who narrates his story:
“I did not know that there were sparrows on the wall; their fresh droppings fell into my eyes and produced white films. I went to physicians to be healed, but the more they treated me with ointments the more my vision was obscured by the white films, until I became completely blind.“
Tobit 2: 10
The physicians, then, are not able to help him, in fact – as if they were charlatans – they make the whole situation even worse, and thus the book of Tobit emphasizes the point that all health and healing are a gift from God‘s hands, just like the gift of life itself. Tobit eventually, after several years, through the help of Saint Raphael the Archangel, receives from God the restoration of his eyes’ sight in response to his prayerful cries for God‘s mercy.
Besides being chastisements for our sins, disease and death simply are painful realities in our lives beyond Eden that sooner or later all of us will have to face – and from a Catholic perspective they are occasions for suffering in Christ and with Christ, for penance and for offering up our sufferings, thereby meriting graces for the whole mystical Body of Christ and giving an example of holy patience like Tobit. Life beyond Eden has its unavoidable sorrows:
“To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children (…).
Genesis 3: 16-19
(…) In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.“
Yet on our pathway through this valley of tears and of the shadow of death, Christ the Divine Physician Himself, the Wounded Healer, has gone before us to make our most heavy yokes light, to transform human suffering from within:
“Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.“
Isaiah 53: 3-5
A positive attitude towards physicians and medicine
There is a second interesting layer in the words of Joshua ben Sirach: a positive attitude towards physicians and medicine. He counsels us to “honour the physician“ (Sirach 38: 1), which means to both respect and obey him, and states that “a wise man will not abhor“ the “medicines out of the earth“ (Sirach 38: 4). And no, let us not apprehend this as a reference to the “wisdom of Mother Earth“, a pagan notion which the Jewish sage never would have embraced. Let us understand “medicines out of the earth“ as denoting the medicines produced by human labor which – at times with the help of technology – extracts value from given resources and refines them to something useful and beneficial. The Most High created both physicians and medicines for our profit.
The line “Was not bitter water made sweet with wood?“ in verse 5 of the 38th chapter of the book of Sirach compares the medicines that contribute to the restoration of our health with the “wood“ that makes sweet what is bitter and alludes to Israel‘s experience with the waters of Mara in the wilderness:
“And Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went forth into the wilderness of Sur: and they marched three days through the wilderness, and found no water. And they came into Mara, and they could not drink the waters of Mara, because they were bitter: whereupon he gave a name also agreeable to the place, calling it Mara, that is, bitterness. And the people murmured against Moses, saying: What shall we drink? But he cried to the Lord, and he shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, they were turned into sweetness.“
Exodus 15: 22-25
Such lines as these in the book of Exodus and the book of Sirach are hints foreshadowing Christ – pointing us to the Wounded Healer hung on a tree who makes all that is bitter sweet…
But let us return to Joshua ben Sirach‘s appreciation for physicians: He sees them as one of the agents God employs in healing our bodies and souls. Their knowledge and acquired skill are good and necessary – and need to be regarded, as everything in our lives, as God‘s gracious gifts. In accordance with the principle of “honor to whom honor is due“, Joshua ben Sirach reminds us to esteem them.
“The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be praised.“
Sirach 38: 3
“The virtue of these things is come to the knowledge of men, and the most High hath given knowledge to men, that he may be honoured in his wonders.“
Sirach 38: 6
Ultimately, God is honored and esteemed when the physician who employs his skill and knowledge given to him by God for the benefit of men is honored and esteemed. Yet any physician should also know and acknowledge his place of authority under God, keeping in mind that God, the one Great Physician, is the source of all healing. Therefore Joshua ben Sirach counsels them to
“beseech the Lord that He would prosper what they give for ease and remedy (…).“
Sirach 38: 14
The physician shall never seek to replace God and shall never act up as some kind of god-like or messianic figure. As with every other occupation given to men for the service of their neighbors, the best physician is nothing but God‘s humble servant, able to acknowledge the limited scope of his knowledge and his skills.
The God we worship is the God of order and reason. If we should find any fault with the scientific foundation of modern medicine and the academic and systematic training of our modern physicians, are we not finding fault with order and reason itself, though they are deeply and essentially inscribed into the world God created?
Ethos and virtue might be lacking in some of those practicing modern medicine – as it is lacking everywhere, in each and every corner of our current society, and surely lacking in everyone of us. Yet to defy order and reason and to set ourselves above and beyond them can hardly ever be anything other but vicious – because it is haughty and not humble to do so.
It is humble to subordinate ourselves to the dictates of order and reason. And it is humbling to “fall into the hands of a physician“, just like it is “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God“ (Hebrews 10: 31) – to not be able to help ourselves, neither by our own craftiness nor by the one of our favorite charlatan who has promised to provide for us the very thing we always crave: only sweet, never bitter, only pure health but without the “wood“, without pain and travail.
Honest medicine worthy of its name is not an easy fix.