Prayer Is Good Medicine

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUN 3, 1996

Unlike medical practitioners in the East, many physicians in the West argue that the healing power of science is far superior to, and often incompatible with, the healing power of prayer. Yet, physician Dossey, attentive to the ways in which spiritual health affects bodily health, demonstrated in his Healing Words that the capacity of prayer to heal, combined with the capacity of science to heal, is far greater than the healing power of medicine alone. Using evidence from scientific studies regarding the beneficial effects of prayer on health, Dossey has here fashioned a kind of how-to manual for incorporating prayer into the process of healing. After first defining prayer as an attitude of the heart whose content is neither shaped by nor limited to a single religious tradition, Dossey then proceeds to explore the infinite variety of forms that prayer may take. Dossey's holistic vision challenges narrow religious views of prayer as well as conventional medical method of healing.