The Healing Imperative: The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine as We Know It
About this ebook
When Jesus sent seventy disciples on ahead of him, part of their mission was to heal the sick. In fact, they were supposed to heal the sick before they preached the Gospel. Best-selling author Mike Aquilina calls this command the healing imperative. And it’s an imperative that ushered in the world of modern medicine. The Healing Imperative: The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine as We Know It reconstructs the fascinating history of a uniquely Christian institution: the hospital. Underlining how the virtues of charity and hospitality motivated the first generations of Christians, along with Jesus’ explicit command to heal the sick, Aquilina shows just how revolutionary the actions of Christian doctors and nurses were and how they transformed society in ways that still reverberate today.
The radical developments in health care spearheaded by Christians influenced culture, society, and civilization. As The Healing Imperative proves, now more than ever, the compassion of Christians is needed to guide the world of medicine. Jesus’ command still resonates, and Aquilina urges us to respond.
About the author
Mike Aquilina is the author of more than fifty books, including the best-selling The Fathers of the Church: An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers; The Mass of the Early Christians; and How the Choir Converted the World: Through Hymns, With Hymns, In Hymns. His reviews, essays, and journalism have appeared in First Things, Touchstone, National Catholic Register, and elsewhere. Aquilina is the Executive Vice President of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and along with Dr. Scott Hahn has hosted several popular series on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). He and his wife Terri are parents to six and grandparents to two.
