Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World

by Jacalyn Duffin

Modern culture tends to separate medicine and miracles, but their histories are closely intertwined. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes saints through canonization based on evidence that they worked miracles, as signs of their proximity to God. Physicianhistorian Jacalyn Duffin has examined Vatican sources on 1400 miracles from six continents and spanning four centuries. Overwhelmingly the miracles cited in canonizations between 1588 and 1999 are...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019533650X
• ISBN13: 9780195336504
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Miracles Do Happen

I have had a longstanding interest in healing in all its many forms, and in particular apparently miraculous healings, which are usually just labeled "spontaneous remissions," "placebo responses" or "regressions to the mean." I think that this book is unique. Written by someone who is both a physician and historian at Queen's University in Ontario, she has drawn on the Vatican archives and texts from the Vatican library to critically review four centuries of testimony on the topic of "medical miracles." The background to her research is fascinating. Over twenty years ago she was working as a hematologist and was asked to examine the medical records of a woman who was in remission from acute leukemia. She was asked to do this "blind," and it was only later that she learned that the patient's story was part of the canonization process of the first Canadian-born saint, Marie-Marguerite d'Youville. She then realized that the Vatican archives must contain medical data for healing miracles performed by every saint canonized in modern times. The Roman Catholic Church uses strict criteria for healing miracles. If there is any chance that the healing might have occurred naturally or through human intervention, then it "does not count." So independent medical opinions are recruited to rigorously analyze claims of a miracle. Not only was Dr. Duffin unaware of the nature of the case on which she was asked to consult, she was, by her own admission, both a skeptic and an atheist. People are often surprised to learn that the Roman Catholic Church differs from many other Christian denominations in its constant evolution as new scientific discoveries are made. It has invited cosmologists, physicists and brain scientists to inform church teachings, and the process of certifying healing miracles keeps evolving as medical science develops. Duffin also tells us something that will surprise many people unfamiliar with the workings of the Church, "To my surprise, both as a doctor and a historian, I quickly learned that the Vatican does not and never did recognize healing miracles in people who eschew orthodox medicine to rely solely on faith. The canonization officials strive to consider the latest in science; they do not want to be manipulated by the wiles of sensationalists or the aspirations of the gullible. Doctors provide an antidote to these problems with their medical knowledge, their ostensible objectivity, and even their skepticism." For a healing to be considered miraculous it must also be "Complete, durable and instantaneous." Duffin has collected 1400 cases of miraculous healing between 1588 and 1999. They came from 48 countries and cover an array of medical conditions from cancer to tuberculosis. One of the striking points is that while healing miracles are reported in the gospels and continued through Medieval times, they seem to be increasing into the 20th century despite the growing power and sophistication of medical science. She also looks at the

Fascinating--a doctor studies miracles

Twenty years before starting to write this book, Duffin, a hematologist, was "invited to read a set of bone marrow samples....The fourteen specimens were taken from one woman over an eighteen-month period" (p 3), a woman suffering from severe leukemia. Duffin assumed the patient had died, and that she had been asked to look over the samples for a lawsuit. As it turned out, the patient was--and still is--very much alive. The samples were being studied by the Catholic church during the process of sainthood. Every person who was proposed for canonization had to have a required number of miracles before the process could continue. And the church needed to be sure it really was a miracle. A good outcome was not enough for the church. Nor did a long remission count. Instead, the miracle needed to be spontaneous, and lasting. This process of canonization, which began in the 1500's, required medical doctors to agree that there was no possible scientific explanation for what had occurred. Curious, Duffin visited the Vatican's archives and studied the miracles recorded over the past four centuries. The result of her research is this book, full of quirky facts about the miracles and the people and the doctors involved. Take the case of Maria, who, in 1844, discovered a lump in her breast the size of a walnut. "Every day it grew bigger, harder, and more painful (p 37). The doctors insisted on an instant surgery. But her priest told her about "the cause of Paolo della Croce...so for twenty days and nights, Maria prayed to the uncanonized Paolo" (p 37). On the night of Oct. 20th the lump vanished. Some miracles are downright common, such as the incorruptibility "(preservation) or sweet odor of the corpse of a saint" (p 100). This miracle was "so frequent an occurrence ...that exhumation of the body of the would-be saint was part of the canonization process" (p 102). Oddly, miracles that the saint performed before he died didn't count for the required number of miracles through his intercession after death. Having the stigmata may have been a sign of holiness; it had no effect on the canonization process. Some doctors became defensive during the process, and some seemed to be left out of the loop, so that, ten years or more after seeing a patient, they are stunned to realize that same patient is still alive. Surprise seems to be part of the process. "Just as the doctors' surprise is crucial...the patient's surprise at recovery also seems to be an important element...The devout do not presume" ( p 177). Truly a fascinating book.