Phrases like "things just get better for this person", "a boost towards a better life" and especially "general ritual" suggest something as vague as themselves. A really general blessing. I don't have much experience, but from what I've learned I know one thing: when you perform a ritual to achieve something, energy works like a laser when focused (on a very particular result) and like simple lightbulb light when out of focus (like "i wanna make the world a peaceful place"). The difference in efficiency is quite obvious, I guess. So the problem is not that the general blessing you mentioned is impossible but - at least for me - highly inefficient. Don't get me wrong, though, maybe someone more proficient in magick would succeed where others would fail (IMG:
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You've touched upon a very interesting issue, though. Healing without permission and/or knowledge is considered black magick. To tell you the truth, I don't really understand it. People may not want you to interfere in various situations and problems like love, work or whatever but you can be quite sure they do want to recover as soon as possible (at least on the consciousness level, because it might be their subconsciousness that's trying to kill them). So why on earth not?
OK, maybe Karma and stuff... But I don't think that even most of the diseases have their reason in Karma, let alone all of them. So maybe divination first and then healing?