Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping

by Robert M. Sapolsky

been a philosophical view of disease that is “lapsarian” in nature, characterizing illness as the punishment meted out by God for sin (all deriving from humankind’s lapse in the Garden of Eden). Its adherents obviously predated any knowledge about germs, infection, or the workings of the body. This view has mostly passed (although see the endnote for this page for an extraordinary example of this thinking that festered in the Reagan administration), but as you read through Siegel’s book, you unconsciously wait for its reemergence, knowing that disease has to be more than just not having enough groovy New Age spirituality, that God is going to be yanked into Siegel’s world of blame as well. Finally, it bubbles to the surface in chapter 8: “I suggest that patients think of illness not as God’s will but as our deviation from God’s will. To me it is the absence of spirituality that leads to difficulties.” Cancer, thus, is what you get when you deviate from God’s will.