A second series of ecclesiastical decrees that are often referred to in the history of medicine are those which concern the relations of the physician and his patient whenever there is danger of death. The Church's duty was to secure the proper dispositions on the part of those who were in danger of death. Physicians sometimes did not let patients and their friends know how serious the illness was and as a consequence patients died without the sacraments and rites of the Church. In order to prevent this the Church regulation was promulgated that a physician was bound to have a patient take care of his soul at the same time that his body was being treated. Physicians of the present day, even when they are not themselves Catholics, know how much of good, even physical good, is done to patients almost without exception by the consolations of religion. Instead of being perturbed as is sometimes thought by those who have not had experience with the custom, exactly the opposite effect is produced, and patients often drop their anxieties and solicitudes and begin to improve immediately after the reception of the sacraments. They usually submit themselves to whatever Providence has in store for them, put off their worries, and this factor of itself is eminently therapeutic.
Many a non-Catholic physician obeys these decrees of the Church with regard to the summoning of a priest to an ailing Catholic patient without knowing anything about them. He does it because of his experience that his patients are benefited by the consolations of religion. The wisdom of the Church in the decrees is seen very well by the paragraph in which it is suggested that the reason for having the physician always advise the calling in of a priest is that if this advice is given only when there is serious danger of death many patients knowing this will be thrown into a state of depression very harmful to them when the suggestion is made.
How such decrees could be thought in any way to interfere with medicine or its practice, or with the physician and his duties, or, above all, represent any effort on the part of the Church to hamper medical science or discourage patients from having physicians, I [{429}] cannot for the life of me imagine. The idea sometimes suggested that the real reason for this legislation was that the Church did not want patients to die before priests were given an opportunity to secure money for services in the administration of the last rites or for masses for the recovery of the patient and the like, would only enter into the mind of someone who not only did not understand the Church and had no experience of Catholics and Catholic life, but who had no proper recognition of the place of religion in life as a great source of consolation and strength in the face of the mystery of death and the hereafter.
Those who think religion a mere hypocrisy imposed on people by designing clergy are so lacking in the knowledge that would enable them to judge of the meaning of such decrees that their opinion is not worth while considering. It must not be forgotten that these decrees are still binding on a Catholic physician, and far from resenting them we welcome them as helps in securing the aid of the consolations of religion for our patients. Many a worried business man suffering from some severe disease like pneumonia or typhoid fever, goes on to develop a much more favorable mental attitude toward himself and his affection after he has seen the priest. The last paragraph of the first decree also emphasizes the wisdom of the Church and shows how much of an aid her legislation was in the support of ethical standards, for it forbids under the severest penalties that a physician should ever advise a patient to anything contrary to his conscience. This paragraph is also still binding on Catholic physicians.
The Fourth Lateran Council held under Pope Innocent III, A.D. 1215, Canon XII. That the sick should rather provide for the soul than the body.
"Since bodily infirmity sometimes proceeds from sin, the Lord himself saying to the ailing man whom he had cured 'Go now and sin no more lest something worse should happen to you,' we declare by the present decree and distinctly impose upon physicians of the body that whenever it shall happen that they are called to ailing persons, they must before all warn and persuade the ailing that they should call in physicians of the soul so that after the spiritual safety of the sick has been provided for he may proceed more healthfully to the remedy of corporeal medicine, since the cause ceasing the effect shall also cease.
"This among other things gave cause for this edict that certain people lying on a bed of sickness when persuaded by physicians that they should dispose things for the safety of their souls fall into a condition of despair whence the more easily they incur the danger of death.
"If any one of the physicians after this constitution of ours shall have been published should transgress it he should be kept from entrance to the Church until he shall have satisfied competently for the transgression.
"Besides, since the soul is by far more precious than the body, we prohibit under dire anathema that any physician should ever advise a patient to do anything for his corporal welfare that would bring him into danger of losing his soul."
The Synodal Statutes of the Church of Mans (the chief town of the Province of Main), A.D. 1247.
On Communion for the Sick.