Facing Death: Where Culture, Religion, and Medicine Meet, Part 4Howard Marget Spiro, Mary G. McCrea Curnen, Lee Palmer Wandel We have learned a great deal in recent years about keeping death at bay through medical technology. We are less well informed, however, about how to face death and how to understand or articulate the emotional and spiritual needs of the dying. This profound and eloquent book brings together medical experts and distinguished authorities in the humanities to reflect on medical, cultural, and religious responses to death. The book helps both medical personnel and patients to view death less as an adversary and more as a defining part of life. In the first half of the book, physicians and the founder of Connecticut Hospice discuss the current clinical setting for dying, with attempts to find the balance between alleviating suffering and providing life support, the problem of finding a peaceful death, and the differences the AIDS epidemic has made in our attitudes toward dying. In the second half of the book, theologians, historians of religion, anthropologists, literary scholars, and pastors describe Christian, Judaic, Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese perceptions of death and rituals of mourning. An epilogue considers the resonances between medicine and the humanities, as well as the essential differences in their approaches to death. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 19 |
A Clinicians Reflections | 33 |
Thoughts on Euthanasia and Physician | 44 |
Learning to Care for the Dying | 52 |
Thoughts on Witnessing Death | 60 |
The Changing Face of Death in Children | 66 |
When Children Mourn a Loved One | 77 |
CHAPTER IO Caring for Those Who Die in Old Age | 90 |
INTRODUCTION III | 111 |
The Art of Dying in Hindu India | 121 |
Reflections on Mortality from a Jewish | 129 |
Catholic Theologys Main Thoughts | 137 |
The Meaning of Death in Islam | 148 |
Notes | 160 |
Bearing the Spirit Home | 180 |
William J Bouwsma Ph D | 199 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
AIDS American Ariès art of dying asked autopsy become believe body called caregivers century Chapter child Christian clinical comfort culture dead death and dying diagnosis died discussion disease divine doctors and nurses dying patients dying person Elisabeth Kübler-Ross eternal euthanasia experience face faith fear feel friends funeral Goethe-Institut grave heart heaven Hindu hope hospice care hospital human important intensive care unit Islam Jac Wall Lippet Liu Yuan lives loss meaning medical students medicine memory Midrash Montaigne moriendi mortality Moses mourning Muslim NAMES Project NAMES Project Quilt one's pain palliative care panel parents percent physicians practice professionals Quilt Qur'an religion religious resuscitation role School social soul spiritual suffering Talmud things thought tion tomb contracts tradition treatment understand University Press women Yale University Yale-New Haven Hospital York