Medical Understandings of Pain
Medical Understandings of Pain
This chapter discusses how medical explanations for pain, based on the body and its neurological organization, both created and went some way towards filling the gap in conceptualizing physical suffering left by the failure in Christian rationales of benevolently inflicted pain. Advances in medical knowledge breached Christian certitude as they undermined the naturalness of pain and put in its place a bodily function that could be removed, or at least alleviated, by chemical or surgical interference. Christianity was forced by its nature to accept pain not as a function of the body in distress, but rather as a counter in God's interaction with humankind.
Keywords: medicine, medical profession, bodily pain, physical pain, Christianity
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