Fall 1979
The Fall 1979 Issue explores the historical and cultural intersections between Mormonism and medicine. Robert T. Divett examines how Mormons responded to cholera epidemics and offers a broader historical perspective on their medical practices. Linda P. Wilcox discusses Brigham Young's critical view of medical professionals, while N. Lee Smith considers the role of herbal remedies in Mormon health practices. Lester E. Bush, Jr. reviews 19th-century physiological beliefs among Mormons, and Joseph L. Lyon and Steven Nelson analyze Mormon health trends. Lester E. Bush, Jr. compiles Mormon medical ethics guidelines, Duane E. Jeffery addresses the underexplored topic of intersex individuals in LDS teachings, and Gary L. Bunker and Davis Bitton comment on perceptions of physiognomy within the context of polygamy.
In the spring of 1826 cholera broke out in the delta area of the Ganges River in India and began to spread over the country. Within two years Asiatic Cholera ascended the river with its…
At the time of the American revolution, most medical care in America was provided either by self-taught practitioners or by those who had apprenticed under other doctors. A few doctors were immigrants from Great Britain…
Not long after Utah was linked by railroad with the rest of the country, Brigham Young expressed these views: “Doctors and their medicines I regard as a deadly bane to any community. . . .…
A recent listener-response radio program in Salt Lake City discussed the death of a young father from bleeding ulcers. Believing it wrong to seek medical help, he had sought a cure from an herbal practitioner.…
It was nearly sunset when young Dr. Roberts Bartholow passed through Salt Lake City. Having the “good—or ill—fortune to be one of the expeditionary corps, dispatched in the summer of 1857 to Utah,” Bartholow had…
The experience of Daniel and his friends in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon was, perhaps, the first published instance of a controlled clinical trial. This preliminary success led to an extension of the trial diet for a three-year period, at the end of which Daniel’s group not only demonstrated fairer countenances, but superior performances on the king’s equivalent to an I.Q. test.
Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 97–107
Of all medical ethical guidelines published by the Church, those relating to abortion are the most emphatically stated. Offenders, be they doctor, patient, or abettor, are subject to excommunication.
Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 107–113
In the Fall 1979 issue, an LDS evolutionary biologist wrote a really important piece, ahead of its time in some ways, challenging the idea of binary gender in his article, “Intersexes in Humans: An Introductory Exploration.” Duane laid out the problem clearly—we can’t say that sex is binary by divine design when it is not binary in nature.
Ruth Benedict perceptively observed: “The first lesson of history . . . is that when any group in power wishes to persecute or expropriate another group, it uses as justification, reasons which are familiar and…
December 14: Lyn really managed to get herself worn down. Lyn, Mom, Adina and I drove to Salt Lake City to see three naturopaths. The first one diagnosed Lyn’s condition as a collapsed left lung.…
Mormonism throughout much of its rather brief, history has stirred emotional responses from a large portion of the American populace. What began in the 1830’s as persecution and a forced flight to the West has…
More important than the book itself is the furor it raised. When In His Image was published, people were forced to ask some provocative questions: Is human cloning actually possible? What are its social, moral…
Medicine has rediscovered that all life ends in death, and now seems marginally willing to explore the possibility of life after death. Raymond Moody, a psychiatrist trained in philosophy, writes one of the more straightforward…
These two books from our own Mormon culture are typical of a large number of similar publications in the lay press. Well meaning people who have found that modern medicine cannot cure everything are too…
