Faithful Healers

[grayman]

In the Health and Science section of yesterday's paper, about 80% of the page was devoted to the use of prayer in the nursing field. Here is a link to the main article of the page.

...about two years ago, Teresa Donnelly got sick enough to go to the doctor, sick enough she thought she may die.

Her friends at Our Lady of the Mountain Catholic Church in Jackson began to pray for her.

"I could feel the prayers," Donnelly said, convinced her physical health was connected to her spirituality.

By the time doctors figured out she was allergic to the Amoxicillin, she was in stage four of liver failure and needed a transplant.

Donnelly prepared to go to Salt Lake City and be placed on the transplant list.

But before she went, she turned to God and fellow believers to deal with the diagnosis.

"Praying with someone is like the power of positive thinking," said Kuhl, who often prays with patients while holding their hands. "If you pray for good health, they will often get it, or at least get some peace. We need to minister to the whole person."

I thought about putting this in the Religion section, but decided that this would be better discussed in Science and Medicine.

 

[Cuddles]

If I remember rightly, the most recent study on the effects of prayer actually showed that the people who were being prayed for were worse off than those that weren't, although the results were not significant. I'm sure someone here has a link to that.

Edit : http://www.newscientist.com/channel...s-found-ineffective-in-speeding-recovery.html
The effect was actually significant, but only if they knew they were being prayed for.

 

[petra10]

The power of prayer in my experience has been if the sick person being prayed for gets better great thanks is given to the person or persons the prayers were said too for the healing.Not much thanks goes to the doctors or modern medicine for the patients recovery.
however if the sick person unfortunitly dies I never hear of the prayers getting the blame or any reson why the prayers never worked.