In 1763 Edward Stone, a vicar in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, wrote to the Royal Society about willow bark. Chewing it, he found, eased fevers. The active ingredient became the starting point for aspirin.
Benefit is hidden all through creation, waiting to be found. an-Nāfiʿ, the One who brings benefit, is the source of every good that reaches us. He is always named with aḍ-Ḍārr: benefit and harm both pass only by His leave.
Start with what we know
Then take away everything it needs. What is left is not a bigger version of us. It is the Name.
Episode 1
In us
On 25 April 1763 the Reverend Edward Stone sent a letter to the President of the Royal Society describing how he had dried and powdered willow bark and given it to about fifty people with 'agues', fevers. It worked. His letter still survives. A century later chemists isolated salicylic acid, and in 1897 Bayer made a gentler form, aspirin. Human beings are wonderful at finding benefit in the world. But every medicine we find has side effects, and every healer works with what they did not make.
Episode 2
In nature
The Qur'an speaks of bees and the drink that comes from them, “of varying colours, in which there is healing for people” (16:69). Scientists have found that honey has natural antibacterial properties: it is very sugary, slightly acidic and, in some types, produces small amounts of hydrogen peroxide, and medical-grade honey is used in some wound dressings. That is wonder, not medical advice. A single worker bee makes only a small fraction of a teaspoon of honey in her life. Nature's benefit comes drop by drop, and with limits.
Episode 3
At our best
In 1928 Alexander Fleming noticed that a mould had killed bacteria on a dish in his London laboratory. In 1941 Howard Florey and Ernst Chain's team in Oxford gave penicillin to its first patient, a policeman named Albert Alexander, who began to recover. But they did not have enough. They even recovered penicillin from his urine to reuse it. On the fifth day it ran out, he relapsed, and he died on 15 March 1941. Penicillin went on to save millions. Even our greatest benefit has limits.
Episode 4
The Break
Take away side effects, shortage, chance discovery and the limits of every healer. Every benefit we know comes from somewhere, costs something and runs out. an-Nāfiʿ brings benefit by His will, and nothing in creation can benefit us unless He allows it. The Prophet said that God has not created a disease without also creating its cure (Bukhari 5678): benefit is woven into the world, waiting for us to find it. “Say: Do you worship, besides God, what has no power to harm you or benefit you? It is God who is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing” (Qur'an 5:76, our rendering).
The Qur'an remembers a speech of Abraham (peace be upon him) to his father and his people, who worshipped idols. He asked them: when you call on them, do they hear you? Do they benefit you, or harm you?
They had no answer except: this is what we found our fathers doing.
So Abraham (peace be upon him) described the Lord he worshipped, in some of the most tender lines in the Qur'an: He created me, and He guides me. He gives me food and drink. When I am ill, it is He who heals me. He will cause me to die and then bring me to life. And He is the One I hope will forgive my faults on the Day of Judgement. (Qur'an 26:69-82)
Abraham (peace be upon him) does not deny illness, or death. He lists them, plainly, beside food, guidance and healing. Everything that reaches him, the benefit and the hardship, comes from one Lord. That is why the tradition names an-Nāfiʿ with aḍ-Ḍārr.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) also encouraged people to seek treatment: “God has not sent down a disease without sending down its cure” (Bukhari 5678). Finding the cure is part of trusting the Healer.
After the Israelites found the bitter water at Marah made sweet, God told them: “I am the LORD that healeth thee.” One of God's names in Jewish tradition is Rofe, Healer, and the eighth blessing of the daily Amidah is a prayer for healing.
Jewish law treats seeking a doctor as a duty, not a lack of faith: the Talmud reads Exodus 21:19 as giving physicians permission to heal (Bava Kamma 85a).
Christianity
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights”
The letter of James says that every good thing comes from God: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”
Christians remember Jesus (peace be upon him) as a healer, and many of Britain's oldest hospitals, such as St Bartholomew's (founded 1123) and St Thomas', began as Christian foundations.
an-Nāfiʿ is not in the Qur'an as a Name but is in the traditional list, always paired with aḍ-Ḍārr. The Qur'an repeatedly asks why people worship what “has no power to harm or benefit” (5:76), and Abraham (peace be upon him)'s words, “When I am ill, it is He who heals me” (26:80), are recited in prayers for the sick.
Muslim civilisation built great hospitals, such as the Manṣūrī hospital in Cairo (1284), seeing medicine as a way of honouring this Name.
Same and different
Exodus' 'the LORD that healeth thee', James' 'every good gift' and Abraham (peace be upon him)'s 'He heals me' all trace benefit and healing to God, and all three faiths encourage medicine. Christians also see healing in the ministry of Jesus (peace be upon him) in a distinctive way, linked to their belief about who he is.
A moment to reflect
What is the most useful thing in your home that started in nature?
Why might seeking a doctor be part of trusting God, not the opposite?
Who has been a benefit in your life without knowing it?
Watch
Watch on YouTube ↗ · plays here on the live site; YouTube without tracking until you press play
TED-Ed on Fleming's accident and how penicillin changed the world.
Watch on YouTube ↗ · plays here on the live site; YouTube without tracking until you press play
Deep Look on how honeybees make honey, drop by drop.
Do it together
schools / familiesHealing plants
Visit a physic garden (such as the Chelsea Physic Garden or a botanic garden) or look up plants that gave us medicines, such as willow and foxglove. Read Exodus 15:26 and Qur'an 26:80.
neighbours / faith groupsThank a healer
Write thank-you cards to a local GP surgery, pharmacy or hospice. Share stories of people in your communities who have worked in medicine.
Episode 1
