The temple vision in palliative care

Music-thanatology draws as much historical inspiration from the Asclepian ideal as it does from the practice of Cluniac monastic medicine. In both traditions, the patient initiates the social drama and is a most active agent in the healing process. In both traditions, the patient has the central voice and is listened to and responded to by the caregivers and clinicians, who facilitate and support in the spirit of service rather than direct/control. In both traditions, we may find death-bed healing without curing and be struck by the urgent, transcendental role of Beauty, as expressed in nature (human and elemental), the arts, architecture, and music. Clearly, our guest author envisions a profound end-of-life music-thanatology clinical practice in which the well-known, empirical Hippocratic and the lesser known, sacred Asclepian are integrated into the ideals of monastic medicine. In so doing, not only are pain and suffering uniquely met, but a blessed, peace-filled or conscious transitus may occur, and each death-bed setting has the potential to become nothing less than a sanctuary for completion.