Plough Quarterly No. 17- The Soul of Medicine, Sadana Stephanie, Perkins John M., Williams Sarah

Medicine, so long as you dont need it, is a tangential part of life, just one more profession among others. Until that is, a loved one suffers an accident or falls sick. Then, suddenly, medicine is quite literally, a matter of life or death. Medicine is also big business. Doctors have been reclassified as service providers, and patients are clients. Such commercialism breeds false incentives and inequalities, even in nations.

We need a vision of how medicine might serve the good of the whole human person: the bodys health, but also the health of that piece of divinity in us. We need love and reverence for humans as they are, not humans as technology may someday engineer them to be. Jesus, the healer from Nazareth, showed what it means to love the imperfect, the frail, the average. The glory of the medical profession is that it is dedicated to these works of mercy. In todays money-driven healthcare industry, such tasks are often poorly rewarded. Yet theyre at the heart of medicines original mission.

Also in this issue: original poetry by Suzanne Harlan Heyd; reviews of new books by Barbara Ehrenreich, Ryan T. Anderson, Beth Macy, and David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikl ; and art by Tim Lowly, Michelangelo, Julian Peters, Wanjin Gim, Scott Goldsmith, Jan Mostaert, Suleiman Mansour, C cile Massie, Peter Doig, Erin Hanson, and Jason Landsel.