We have learned a great deal 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 book brings together medical experts and authorities in the humanities to reflect on medical, cultural and religious responses to death. The book should help 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, ...
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We have learned a great deal 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 book brings together medical experts and authorities in the humanities to reflect on medical, cultural and religious responses to death. The book should help 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 hospice discuss the current clinical setting for dying, with attempts to find the balance between alleviating suffering and 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 per-ceptions of death and rituals of mourning. An epilogue con-siders the resonances between medicine and the humanities, as well as the essential differences in their approaches to death.
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Seller's Description:
Very good. No dust jacket. Ex-library. xxii, 212 p. : ill.; 24 cm. LCCN 96002487 Type of material Book Main title Facing death: where culture, religion, and medicine meet / edited by Howard M. Spiro, Mary G. McCrea Curnen, and Lee Palmer Wandel. Published/Created New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996. Description xxii, 212 p. : ill.; 24 cm. ISBN 0300063490 (cloth: alk. paper) LC classification R726.8. F33 1996 Related names Spiro, Howard M. (Howard Marget), 1924-Curnen, Mary G. McCrea. Wandel, Lee Palmer. Yale University. Program for Humanities in Medicine. Goethe-Institut (Boston, Mass. ) LC Subjects Terminally ill. Death--Psychological aspects. Death--Religious aspects. Death--Moral and ethical aspects. Notes "Prepared under the auspices of the Program for Humanities in Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine and the Goethe-Institut, Boston." Includes bibliographical references and index. Dewey class no. 155.9/37