Medicine – Page 2

A Calling – Parallels Between Clergy and Physicians, Part 9

February 28, 2019 By Deena Leave a Comment

The similarities between how Read, and physicians in general, interact with and are perceived by patients and clergy and their interactions with believers of the faith are notable. Levin says that “physicians have been compared to a secular priesthood.”[1] This I find to be true in the case of Read in the way he positions himself as a prophet, preaching his “gospel of natural childbirth”. Read’s patients, the mothers, seek him out for his guidance and his unwavering faith in his method and in the idea of painless childbirth. The repetition and the allegorical storytelling Read uses to engage his readers and listeners mimics that of a preacher or priest on the pulpit.

Louw, in a commentary on preaching says, “Words and communication are attempts to transcend the immediacy of the experience – its aim is to take human life further than merely the phenomenology of facts and observation of mundane entities. Its aim is to give language and vocabulary to life events and spiritual experiences.”[2] Birth is therefore viewed as a life event that is both medical and spiritual.

This association between medical and spiritual can be seen in Messikomer’s ethnographic study on the spirituality of modern physicians. She found that her sample group all agreed that their desire to become physicians was a calling, not unlike a calling to the ministry.[3] One of her subjects stated, “Apart from being called to ministry, I think it’s (medicine) the highest calling.”[4] It becomes the highest calling one can have because of the duty to serve, protect and heal the sick. Though Messikomer doesn’t use the term moral theology I will choose to use it in the context of physicians and their practice. Given that physicians tackle the issues of pain, suffering, accidents, depression, anxiety, birth and death, and religion does the same then physicians are practicing a variant of moral theology.

This goes beyond the traditional definition of the term relating to Christian ethics. We can look at moral theology through the broader perspective of decision making which is relative not only to one’s own actions and how that relates to God or to any one specific religious doctrine. Moral theology can be applied to any religion, philosophy or model of behaviors. In this case, with physicians relating their calling to medicine as to that of the ministry, and with physicians having to adhere to specific codes of ethics such as: the Hippocratic Oath, HIPPA regulations, privacy guidelines, informed consent rules, and so on, they are provided with a moral framework within which they must work. This moral framework for physicians mirrors that of organized religion. Authority from on high, within a hierarchical structure, creates and enforces these moral and ethical guidelines for physicians.

Vanderpool suggests that “religious and medical professionals rely upon certain common dynamics”.[5] He lists six shared functions between faith and medicine: postulating, prescribing and proscribing, establishing, alleviating, managing and enhancing and that each of these reflects both religion and medicine.[6] These shared axioms regard the interplay between body and mind, the meaning of suffering, sexuality, death, strives to understand or manipulate the body and mind, and define personhood.[7] These six shared functions allow for a mapping of faith based, or religious thinking and ritual to be replaced, in part, with medical thinking and ritual.

Vanderpool states, “Religious beliefs thus sustain and shape the practice of medicine, whether or not religion is overtly recognized or practiced within medical institutions.”[8] This is especially recognizable when it comes to the nature and care of a gravid woman. Her beliefs will influence everything from whether she chooses to give birth in a hospital, a free-standing birth center or at home. Her faith in the process, herself and her care providers will inform her sense of safety when making the choice as to where she births and with whom. This is the intangible aspect of pregnancy and birth which Read so successfully tapped into with the mothers who held him in reverence. Vanderpool notes that, “religion and medicine are widely used as ethical gatekeepers for the daily decisions of ordinary persons. In concert with law, religion and medicine specific normative and deviant action for many areas of human life.”[9]

Ethics are moral principles which provide guidance in how people are to live and interact. Religion and medicine both have a framework of ethical precepts and behaviors. Both attempt to define a universal truth about life and how things function. Wardlaw claims that, “science was a particularly appealing tool for an intellectual climate that focused on a search for universalizable truths, and medicine was the ideal conduit for the application of these truths to the human body.”[10] She says that “medical thinking began to function religiously.”[11] Like Vanderpool and Levin, Wardlaw sees doctors as a new type of priesthood, she uses Foucault’s term, “therapeutic clergy.” This is an apt way to describe both Read and his method. Like those entering the clergy, Read felt a calling for medicine. This calling, along with Read’s revelation of natural childbirth and preacher-like style embody this idea of the inseparability of faith and medicine. He, whether intentionally or not, set himself up as a leader of a movement among women, akin to a new religious movement in is fervency and dogmatic structure.

Next up: Rethinking Faith vs. Medicine to become, Faith and Medicine

[1] Levin, J. (2018), The discourse on faith and medicine, a tale of two literatures, p. 275

[2] Louw, D. (2016), Preaching as art (imaging the unseen) and art as homiletics (verbalizing the unseen): Towards the aesthetics if iconic thinking and poetic communication in homiletics, p. 2

[3] Messikomer, C. (2002), The Spirituality of Academic Physicians: An Ethnography of a Scripture-based Group in an Academic Medical Center, p. 562

[4] Messikomer, C. (2002), The Spirituality of Academic Physicians: An Ethnography of a Scripture-based Group in an Academic Medical Center, p. 572

[5] Vanderpool H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 10-11

[6] Vanderpool H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 14

[7] Vanderpool H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 11-12

[8] Vanderpool H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 12

[9] Vanderpool, H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 12-13

[10] Wardlaw, M. P., (2010), America medicine as religious practice: care of sick as a sacred obligation and the decent into secularization, p 64

[11] ibid

Bibliography, Deena Blumenfeld, The Silent Mother, Dr. Grantly Dick-Read Download

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A Calling – Medicine and Faith with a Look to History, Part 8

February 21, 2019 By Deena Leave a Comment

Read’s integration of faith and medicine would be familiar to older practitioners of the medical arts. Looking back as far as the 17^th century, Mann, an historian who specializes in early-modern religion and culture, sees this inseparability of faith and medicine with her case study on Dr. John Downes MD (1627-1694).

Title page of “Anatomices et chirurgiae..” Fabricius Credit: Wellcome Library, London. 1624 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0

Mann argues that “faith remained fundamental in many physicians’’ approaches to their life’s and their work.” She sees, “an intricate relationship between religion and medicine in the seventeenth century.”[1] Mann also suggests that future scholarship needs to study the history and religion in conjunction, rather than as two separate fields of study. She says, “[…] physicians were exceptionally well placed to ‘act the part of the divine’ when treating patients. […] Therefore, the interaction of soul and body, a matter of profound religious significance, also arose an issue in the determination of illness.”[2] Although pregnancy and childbirth are not illnesses, per se, for this argument I will utilize the category of “illness”, being an atypical state of being which needs attention. The prevailing theory among obstetricians during Read’s time, and into the modern era, is that birth is pathological and therefore necessitates medical intervention.[3]

According to Levin, the modern discussion of faith and medicine “has been going on since at least 1835 when Amariah Brigham, founder of the American Psychiatric Association, published his Observations on the Influence of Religion upon the Health and Welfare of Mankind.”[4] Levin also looks back to centuries before the common era to see the discussion of faith and medicine.[5] Throughout the history of medicine, faith and religion have always been included in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. This multiple perspective problem means that it is difficult to have apples to apples comparisons of similar issues within the medicine and faith dialog.

Mann agrees with Levin with regards to a lack of cohesion in the scholarship. She says that religion and medicine are approached as two different sub-fields, and this must be bridged since they have shared practices. She highlights the case of pain medication for childbirth as an example of perceived conflict of medicine versus religion, but it isn’t and only appears to be a conflict.[6]

Read sees no conflict either. He also sees little reason for pain medication, given that he believes birth doesn’t have to be painful. For him it really is about mothers having faith in themselves, the method, Read himself and the fulfillment of their most holy duty of motherhood. He does, somewhat backtrack a bit to appease his colleagues and to appear less fervent regarding the use of pain medication in labor. However, he does remove the determining power of the physician to offer pain medication and transfers that power to the mother to request it.

Next up: A Calling – Parallels Between Clergy and Physicians

[1] Mann, S. (2016), Physic and divinity: the case of Dr. John Downes MD (1627-1694), p.451

[2] Mann, S. (2016), Physic and divinity: the case of Dr. John Downes MD (1627-1694), p.453

[3] Beck, N.C. (1979), Preparation for Labor, a Historical Perspective, p. 245-246

[4] Levin, J. (2018), The discourse on faith and medicine, a tale of two literatures, p. 266

[5] Levin, J. (2018), The discourse on faith and medicine, a tale of two literatures, p. 267

[6] Mann, S. (2016), Physic and divinity: the case of Dr. John Downes MD (1627-1694), p. 463

Bibliography, Deena Blumenfeld, The Silent Mother, Dr. Grantly Dick-Read Download

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Sermons and Stories – Drawing the Listener in to the Community of Believers, Part 7

February 14, 2019 By Deena Leave a Comment

Read used one major technique to draw women in to believing his method worked to reduce or eliminate fear and pain in childbirth. He, like many religious figures, was a consummate storyteller. These stories he told of women who had painless births brought his listeners and his readers into his thrall. His evocative storytelling is seen consistently throughout his writing. The stories give the impression that the reader may have a painless childbirth in the manner of these protagonists if only they pay attention and follow the doctrine of Read’s hopeful message.

The one story he uses, time and again, is that of the Whitechapel woman. This woman, who is nameless, impoverished and lower class. She embodies Read’s idea of a noble savage, yet she is a white woman, which feeds the idea that a birth like hers is possible for any woman. Read witnesses her refusing the chloroform he offers for pain relief, and after having given birth, she turns to him and says, “It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to, was it, doctor?”[1]

There are certain key elements here in this story and in others, that create the faith in both the method and the man. The first is that Read himself is present at the birth. He is both witness and participant. He is the calm, quiet, reverend presence that instills ease in the birthing woman. Yet, he is also the physician – savior, ready to act upon any medical complication as needed. Read is counselor, confessor and physician in a neat package. His very presence is the embodiment of divinity described by Mann, even though the story has all the hallmarks of apocrypha.[2]

Secondly, Read shows faith and confidence in his patient and that faith is reciprocated from her. He believes that she can give birth on her own, free from intervention, and she does. The only doubt she professes is that for the assumption that birth is supposed to hurt. Finally, Read uses this story to convey to women that since he observed easy, painless births and derived his method from these births with the divine hand of God guiding him, then they too can birth just like the Whitechapel woman did, not only painlessly, but also in joy. They too can be participants in saving humanity through birth. Read gives them ownership of not only the birthing experience but also of the long-term positive outcome when they do it right. They create “motherlove” through which they too can take part in saving the world.

In his book, Read gives women and their husbands a specific prescription for success. The women take comfort in his method and the method is relatively straightforward. It includes eliminating negative birth stories from friends and family to begin to reduce fear, prenatal childbirth education with the husband, including progressive relaxation techniques and having the husband present in the delivery room to coach the wife in relaxation methods as taught by Read. All of this giving a woman control and, subsequently, joy during childbirth. In essence, Read promises that if women follow him and have faith in themselves, the technique and the man, they will achieve the ultimate goal of becoming a mother in a state of joy and thus setting the most positive tone for their child’s life. He offered them the world and they engaged with him and bolstered his cause.

Princess Elizabeth was a supporter of The Read Method.

Not only did the middle-class mothers hold him in adoration, but so did Princess Elizabeth, later Queen, with the birth of her first child, Charles. An article in the Daily Mirror noted, “The Princess has told her friends her belief that pain in childbirth can be greatly reduced if a woman has a calm understanding of exactly what is happening when her baby is born […] Princess Elizabeth has read Dr. Dick Read’s book. When it first came out it was impossible to sell it. Now it has been translated into five languages, is a best seller in American and is selling at the rate of thousands of copies a month in this country.”[3] The testimonial, and the faith the Princess had in Read and his method, swept him into celebrity status. This royal endorsement increased the faith women had in Read to the point of almost unquestioning fervor.

“Dear Sir, apropos of the recent statement of the Pope on painless childbirth there is a great deal of publicity given to the subject at the moment. I beg you to use your influence to campaign against the out-dated views held by the Royal College of Physicians, and go get your methods accepted as general technique, etc.” – Anonymous, Jan. 17, 1956[4]

Augmenting the faith in Read and his method was an address by Pope Pius XII on the Science and Morality of Painless Childbirth in May 1956. In this address, the Pope speaks of his dislike of the hypnosis methods of pain control for labor because it created “an emotional deference toward the child.”[5] He also has a strong dislike for pain medications because of the disconnection the mother has from reality through the brain fog of narcotics.

Pope Pius XII, supporter of natural childbirth

Circling back to the concept of the “overcivilized” woman, the Pope uses examples of “primitive peoples” painless births and biblical citations noting that not all labors are painful. He also notes the word “labor” means “work” and not “pain”. Specifically endorsing Read he writes, “For his part, the Englishman Grantly Dick Read has perfected a theory and technique which are analogous in a certain number of points in his philosophical and metaphysical postulates, however he differs substantially, because his are not based like theirs [Russian method, Pavlov and Lamaze], on a material concept.”[6] In other words the Pope supports Read’s method specifically because it is based in faith and not in empirical evidence.

The endorsements by both Pope Pius XII and Princess Elizabeth gave Read validity through influential testimonials. These testimonials and endorsements elevate Read’s status in both celebrity and divinity which enhanced his own sense of divine purpose and faith in his method.

Next Up: A Calling – Medicine and Faith with a Look to History

[1] Read, G.D. (1942), Childbirth without Fear, p. 15

[2] Mann, S. (2016), Physic and divinity: the case of Dr. John Downes MD (1627-1694), p.461

[3] Thomas, A. N. (1957), Doctor Courageous, the story of Dr. Grantly Dick Read, p. 188

[4] Thomas, M. (1997), Postwar Mothers, Childbirth Letters to Dr. Grantly Dick-Read (1946-1956), p. 45

[5] Pius XII, Pope (1956), Science and Morality of Painless Childbirth, p. 39

[6] Pius XII, Pope (1956), Science and Morality of Painless Childbirth, p. 41-42

Bibliography, Deena Blumenfeld, The Silent Mother, Dr. Grantly Dick-Read Download

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