Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints and Healing in the Modern World. By Jacalyn Duffin. Hardcover 285 pp. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-533650-4

Excerpt

Recent experimental studies of intercessory prayer as a healing modality have engendered much controversy (Masters and Spielmans 2007; Masters et al. 2006). There is disagreement on interpretation of the findings, the design and validity, and even on the appropriateness of studies of remote prayer (Paul 2008). One global institution has been scrutinizing the effects of prayer on health outcomes throughout the modern era, taking into account state-of-the-art contemporary science. That institution is the Roman Catholic Church. Although it does not employ methods of the randomized clinical trial, it does use testimony of scientific experts reviewing available clinical and laboratory data as in forensic medicine to assess the causes of unexpectedly favorable clinical events. This takes place as part of the canonization process to scrutinize miracles attributed to candidates for sainthood. Physician and medical historian Jacalyn Duffin of Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada provides insight into the operation of this process, which continues to bring religion and medical science into sometimes uneasy contact in the twenty-first century. This ongoing process provides an interesting backdrop to the literature on prayer for healing and the debate over studies of distance healing through intercessory prayer. …