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Health Views & Biomedical Health

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Submitted By sasha01
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What were people’s views on health? According to his picture, it identifies that throughout history people around the world thought if one with illness, physical, sensory or mental impairment were thought of as under the spell of witchcraft, possessed by demons or big sinners, being punished by god for wrong doing by themselves or their parents (Medical model vs social model, 2007). These ideas still remain some power, in different cultures.
Before the development of medical science, quasi – religious views of health and illness were dominant, whereby illness was connected with sin, penance and evil spirits. This dominant view had conceived the body and soul as a sacred entity beyond the power of human intervention. The influence of scientific disconnect, linked diseased organs with symptoms observed before death. Pasteur’s germ theory, eventually endorsed a belief in the separation of body and soul. This view came to be known as mind/body dualism, referred to a Cartesian dualism after the philosopher Rene Descartes 1590-1650 which refers to a belief that the mind and body are separate entities, which ignores the psychological and subjective aspects of illness. Descartes suggest that although the mind and body interacted with one another with the say of “I think therefore I am”. He identifies that the brain was part of the physical body, whereas the mind existed in the spiritual realm. Therefore medicine could rightly practise on the body while religion could focus on the soul (Capra, 1982; Porter, 1997). This created their intervention of the biomedical model, as disease was then seen as located in the physical body and the mind was considered unimportant. In the 18th century came a more scientific understanding of the causes of impairment and with it a sense of confidence in medical sciences ability to cure individuals with a sickness (Germov, Fourth

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