At thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease—a chronic, incurable condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagnosis, his doctors told him that the best he could hope for would be periods of remission. Unfortunately, doctors never mentioned healing as a possibility. In On Learning to Heal, Cohen draws on fifty years of living with Crohn’s to consider how Western medicine’s turn from an “art of healing” toward a “science of medicine” deeply affects both medical practitioners and their patients. He demonstrates that although medicine can now offer many seemingly miraculous therapies, medicine is not and has never been the only way to enhance healing. Exploring his own path to healing, he argues that learning to heal requires us to desire and value healing as a vital possibility. With this book, Cohen advocates reviving healing’s role for all those whose lives are touched by illness.
Author(s): Ed Cohen
Series: Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography
Publisher: Duke University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 240
City: Durham
Cover
Contents
Prologue: Invoking Healing
Acknowledgments
A Note on Shit
Overture: Healing as Desire and Value
One: Healing Tendencies
Two: We Are More Complicated Than We Know
Three: We Are More Imaginative Than We Think
Four: When We Learn to Heal, It Matters
Coda: Healing with COVID, or Why Medicine is Not Enough
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Z
