I am often taught from  Isaiah 53:4 that we can claim bodily healing from cross or Christs death. It is not uncommon, to hear people using Isaiah 53:4 as their basis to ask for bodily healing when they pray. However, since my younger days, I have always been about this claim. I fully respect the godly people who often taught this and I am in no way criticizing fellow brothers or sisters who hold to this view. Nevertheless, I have to humbly say that I disagree with it.
Personally, I find it hard to see any connection between Christs death on the cross and with bodily healing because in the Old Testament sacrificial/atonement system, atonement is always for sin and never for bodily healing. Neither do the New Testament epistles spoke of the effect of Christs death in terms of bodily healing either. However, I would like to encourage us to re-look at the verses that has often been quoted to support this claim and they are 1 Peter 2:24; Isaiah 53:4-5,12; Matthew 8:17. If you do a careful and sound exegesis* of these texts, it is very hard to come to that conclusion. Unless, someone say that there is no need to understand a text in light of the context or meaning at that time. If thats the case, then we can almost make any part of scripture to say what we want. Of course this subject of healing etc will lead to other questions or issues which I will not jump into in this entry, perhaps in the future I may. However, I will leave you with a few paragraphs taken from John Stotts The Cross of Christ which deals with this particular issue of bodily healing and atonement.
*exegesis The use of appropriate tools that would aid in understanding the text as its original readers understood it.

The Christian conviction that Christ has destroyed death (2 Tim. 1:10) has led some believers to deduce that he has also destroyed disease, and that from the cross we should claim healing as well as forgiveness. A popular exposition of this topic is Bodily Healing and the Atonement (1930) by the Canadian author T.J. McCrossan, which has been re-edited and re-published by Kenneth E. Hagin of the pentacostal Rhema Church. McCrossan states his case in these terms: All Christians should expect God to heal their bodies today, because Christ died to atone for our sicknesses as well as for our sins (p.10). He bases his argument on Isaiah 53:4, which he translates surely he hath borne our sicknesses and carried our pains. He particularly emphasizes that the first Hebrew verb (nasa) means to  bear in the sense of suffering the punishment for something. Since it is also used in Isaiah 53:12 (he bore the sin of many), the clear teaching is that Christ bore our sicknesses in the very same way that he bore our sins (p.120).
There are three difficulties in the way of accepting this interpretation, however. First, nasa is used in a variety of Old Testament contexts, including the carrying of the ark and other tabernacle furniture, the carrying of armour, weapons and children. It occurs in Isaiah 52:11 with reference to those who carry the vessels of the LORD. So the verb in itself does not mean to bear the punishment of. We are obliged to translate it thus only when sin is its object. That Christ our sicknesses may (in fact, does) mean something quite different.
Secondly, the concept McCrossan puts forward does not make sense. Bearing the penalty of sin is readily intelligible, since sins penalty is death and Christ died our death in our place. But what is the penalty of sickness? It has none. Sickness may itself be a penaly for sin, but it is not itself a misdemeanour which attracts a penalty. So to speak Christ atoning for our sicknesses is to mix categories; it is not an intelligible notion.
Thirdly, Matthew (who is the evangelist most preoccupied with the fulfilment of Old Testament Scripture) applies Isaiah 53:4 not to the atoning death but to the healing ministry of Jesus. It was in order to fulfil what was spoken through Isaiah, he writes, that Jesus healed all the sick. So we have no liberty to reapply the text to the cross. It is true that Peter quotes the following verse by his wounds we are healed, but the contexts in both Isaiah and Peter make it clear that the they have in mind is salvation from sin.
We should not therefore, affirm that Christ died for our sicknesses as well as for our sins, that there is healing in the atonement, or that health is just readily available to everybody as forgiveness. (John R.W. Stott, The Cross of Christ, pg. 284-285)

I hope this entry will provoke some thoughts about this issue. If you are keen to read more on the subject of sickness, I highly recommend the Anglican bishop J.C. Ryles small booklet entitled Sickness which you can order from TULIP Reformed Book Centre for just $3 (excluding mail charges of course) or alternatively you can read it at http://www.biblebb.com/files/ryle/PRACT15.TXT . The author who wrote it more than 100 years ago offers a very comforting and different view of sickness that will challenge the contemporary church view of sickness.

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