Medicine and religion: spiritual dimension of health care.

Abstract

The author probes into the origin of medicine and illuminates how religion took an essential part in the birth of ancient medicine in both East and West. In the modern age, medicine as science continues to attain a high level of progress. Yet simultaneously, medicine interacts with the spiritual and religious realm of the human mind. The hospice movement, started by Cecily Saunders in 1967, strongly encouraged this tendency, and now spiritual care is acquiring much importance in global medicine.