RT Journal
A1 Hamlin C
T1 MEdicine and health care in early christianity
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2009
FD December 23
VO 302
IS 24
SP 2710
OP 2711
DO 10.1001/jama.2009.1923
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.1923
AB 
Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity is a succinct, thoughtful, well-written, and carefully argued assessment of Christian involvement with medical matters in the first 5 centuries of the common era. But it is more: Ferngren gently invites readers to consider to what extent medicine as it is currently known is a direct descendent of a Christian synthesis. He pursues 2 main inquiries. The first is primarily sociological and considers whether early Christians were distinct in their use of existing (Greek) medicine or their acceptance of associated natural philosophies of pathology and disease causation. Ferngren believes that they were not, though whether they participated or were accepted as Christians is less clear. The second inquiry considers the views, and, to a lesser degree, actions of prominent Christian writers and leaders. The last 2 chapters treat the emergence of a unique Christian concept of philanthropy and its instantiation, particularly in the later Roman empire and in Byzantium, in novel institutions—hospitals and institutions of welfare—that served a broader public but that were conceived and managed by various lay and ecclesial Christian groups.