How so? I don't have the AD&D book with me, but didn't they use the same healing spells as clerics? BTW, IMHO the AD&D cleric was a bit to much. I rather preferred the Complete Priest rules.
Well, all the priest spells were divided into Cosmos, and the four elements.
Cure Light/Serious/Critical Wounds were in Cosmos, and Heal was in Cosmos as well, and in 2e, that's your healing spells in a nutshell.
Clerics got minor access to Cosmos, and major access to their element. Cure Serious Wounds was a fourth level spell, which meant that no cleric could ever cast it until they were level 21.
When 'Cure Light Wounds' is your only healing at any level of the game, 'terrible healer' does quite sum up your ability to contribute to that cause.
Druids, on the other hand, had major access to Cosmos, which meant that any character who wanted to heal was a druid. And in the Dark Sun sense, that actually made sense. Druids were concerned with the continuation of what little life there was, Clerics only gave a crap about an element's propogation. In exchange, however, Clerics had some ballin' granted powers... when you could summon fire, or boulders in the sky to fall on your foes... or could ignore metal and stone, attacking your enemies from the ground where they cannot attack you back... ignoring their obsidian weapons and their stone armor....
if they say so. Still hard to believe they will ignore so many classes for this setting. But they did stranger things 
