By the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark Jesus’ reputation as a healer is firmly established by the author. Amid throngs of people, he is sought out by the sick. In one such scene, a man named Jairus, a leader of a Jewish synagogue, approaches Jesus and begs him to come and heal his daughter (5:22-23).

On the way to Jairus’ house, however, there is an interruption (5:25-34). A woman approaches Jesus from behind, touches his cloak, and is immediately healed of the hemorrhage that has long plagued her. Jesus, perceiving “that power had gone forth from him,” stops and asks who touched his cloak, whereupon the woman comes forth and tells her story.

It is a story typical of many, not only in the ancient world but in our own day as well. For a dozen years the woman has consulted physicians about her problem, exhausting her financial resources in the process - all to no avail. In her desperation she turns, as do many in our day, to a person who would today probably be labeled a “faith healer.” She has already likely exhausted what we today commonly call “home remedies” and “alternative medicine.” One third of Americans, it is reported, turn to alternative medicine every year - this despite the annual expenditure of billions on conventional medicine in the health-care industry. Incurable, chronic illnesses account for much of this, especially of the sixty percent of those Americans over sixty-five who turn to “unproven therapies.” But poverty, or the fear of being impoverished by conventional medical treatment, as the woman was, also has something to do with this phenomenon.

The cost of health care today drives debates on the subject, not only in the United States, but in other countries as well. There is a crucial difference between the woman's world and ours, however. For a person laid low by sickness in her day there were no medical “safety nets,” as there are in most of the so-called developed world today. Debilitating illness, or disability resulting from an accident while working, could mean descent into poverty and an untimely death. It was a world in which health was prized as the ultimate good. In the words of Aelius