Lyn
April 25, 2018December 14: Lyn really managed to get herself worn down. Lyn, Mom, Adina and I drove to Salt Lake City to see three naturopaths. The first one diagnosed Lyn’s condition as a collapsed left lung.…
DiaBLOGue
Polygamous Eyes: A Note on Mormon Physiognomy
April 25, 2018Ruth Benedict perceptively observed: “The first lesson of history . . . is that when any group in power wishes to persecute or expropriate another group, it uses as justification, reasons which are familiar and…
Intersexes in Humans: An Unexplored Issue in LDS Traditional Beliefs
April 24, 2018Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 107–113
In the Fall 1979 issue, an LDS evolutionary biologist wrote a really important piece, ahead of its time in some ways, challenging the idea of binary gender in his article, “Intersexes in Humans: An Introductory Exploration.” Duane laid out the problem clearly—we can’t say that sex is binary by divine design when it is not binary in nature.
Mormon Medical Ethical Guidelines
April 24, 2018Dialogue 12.3 (Fall 1979): 97–107
Of all medical ethical guidelines published by the Church, those relating to abortion are the most emphatically stated. Offenders, be they doctor, patient, or abettor, are subject to excommunication.
Mormon Health
April 24, 2018The experience of Daniel and his friends in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon was, perhaps, the first published instance of a controlled clinical trial. This preliminary success led to an extension of the trial diet for a three-year period, at the end of which Daniel’s group not only demonstrated fairer countenances, but superior performances on the king’s equivalent to an I.Q. test.
A Peculiar People: The Physiological Aspects of Mormonism, 1850-1875
April 24, 2018It was nearly sunset when young Dr. Roberts Bartholow passed through Salt Lake City. Having the “good—or ill—fortune to be one of the expeditionary corps, dispatched in the summer of 1857 to Utah,” Bartholow had…
Herbal Remedies: God’s Medicine?
April 24, 2018A recent listener-response radio program in Salt Lake City discussed the death of a young father from bleeding ulcers. Believing it wrong to seek medical help, he had sought a cure from an herbal practitioner.…
The Imperfect Science: Brigham Young on Medical Doctors
April 24, 2018Not long after Utah was linked by railroad with the rest of the country, Brigham Young expressed these views: “Doctors and their medicines I regard as a deadly bane to any community. . . .…
Medicine and the Mormons: A Historical Perspective
April 24, 2018At the time of the American revolution, most medical care in America was provided either by self-taught practitioners or by those who had apprenticed under other doctors. A few doctors were immigrants from Great Britain…
His Chastening Rod: Cholera Epidemics and the Mormons
April 24, 2018In the spring of 1826 cholera broke out in the delta area of the Ganges River in India and began to spread over the country. Within two years Asiatic Cholera ascended the river with its…