Summary
In this fifth chapter of the DVD "Recoveries" featuring 18 short films on illness, care and the caregiver-patient relationship, Jean Benoist, anthropologist and medical doctor, questions the enduring link between the religious and the medical spheres and the distinction to be made between the state of the illness and the representation of the illness.
There is a common ground between medicine and religion, because they both provide a response to the fundamental questions humanity is wondering about like death, pain and loss of one's people. However, religion gradually dissociated itself from the medical world and lost its strength. This has meant that the state of the disease, that is, its interpretation, the knowledge that one has of it, is always taken into account, the doctor providing his care; but who is in charge of the representation of the disease? How to treat it?
There is a common ground between medicine and religion, because they both provide a response to the fundamental questions humanity is wondering about like death, pain and loss of one's people. However, religion gradually dissociated itself from the medical world and lost its strength. This has meant that the state of the disease, that is, its interpretation, the knowledge that one has of it, is always taken into account, the doctor providing his care; but who is in charge of the representation of the disease? How to treat it?
