Medicine and Christianity: the protestantization of medicine

The relationship between religion and medicine in the 16th century has attracted considerable attention among scholars in the recent times. This research has yielded many interesting results, showing that Christianity and the practice of medicine were interconnected in a very tight way. As an example, Andrew Cunningham (2001: 44) has claimed that anatomy, being the central issue of early modern medicine, could not be thought of outside the context of Christianity in the mediaeval and early modern eras. Anatomy was part of the philosophy of nature, which held theoretically that the world was created by God. Medicine and anatomy were not separated from the problems of the soul, just as physica was connected with metaphysica. According to Dijkhuizen (2009: 189), illnesses and bodily suffering were also interpreted and experienced within a Christian framework and connected to spiritual improvement. Nonetheless, pain was still seen as an evil resulting from original sin (Pender 2008: 474).

Even though it is a debated question, it can be argued that the Reformation had a significant influence on medical innovations of the 16th century (Helm 2001: 51), and thus the interconnection between medical innovations and evangelical thought can be conceived as the ‘protestantization’ of early modern medicine. Cunningham, trying to explain what would constitute a ‘Protestant’ form of anatomizing, stressed that the conception of the human body as the culmination of creation was not altered with the Reformation but, rather, emphasized by Protestants (Cunningham 1997: 105-252).