Health and Religion- Then and Now
Upon reading Aelius Aristides Sacred Tale 47, the influence of religion on science is revealed as one of the main factors in the events which unfold throughout the piece. Throughout the narrative, Aelius is forced to degrade his health in many ways including fasting, refusal to bathe, and throwing up constantly, which leads to an eventual decline in his health. At one point, Aelius is diagnosed with a tumor and is advised by his god to embrace its growth. As Aelius is introduced to a drug that alleviated his suffering, doctors at the time “stopped in their criticisms and expressed extraordinary admiration” for the work the god had done. By fully crediting his recovery to the work of the god, science in this aspect is viewed as a less dependable solution. Aelius is creating a hierarchy of religion and science, treating religion with much greater influence than anything science could have provided.
Aelius’s loyalty to religion is comparable to the modern reliance on science for knowledge of our world. As our knowledge of science has increased, religion has lessened its grasp on the reliance of its presence for influence on most people’s daily life. Although modern religions still uphold customs such as fasting, the development of science has allowed for safer and more applicable practices that do not exceed the limitations of our human body. At times throughout Aelius’s account, the physical tole he described his body going through made me question the necessity of his undying loyalty to his religion. The more contemporary conception of science, being quite the opposite of Aelius’s view, is more closely aligned with factual information, leaving religion to contain more possibility for abstraction from real occurrences.