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Medical Saints: Cosmas and Damian in a Postmodern World
Cosmas and Damian were martyred around the year 300 A.D. in what is now Syria. Called the Anargyroi ("without silver") because they charged no fees, they became patrons of medicine, surgery, and pharmacy and the focus of cults ranging across Europe. They were popular in Byzantine and Orthodox traditions and their shrines are numerous in Eastern Europe, southern Italy, and Sicily. The Medici family of Florence viewed the "santi medici" as patrons, and their deeds were illustrated by great Renaissance artists. In medical literature they are now revered as patrons of transplantation. Jacalyn Duffin offers a profound exploration of illness and healing experiences in contemporary society through the veneration of the twin doctors Saints Cosmas and Damian. She also relates a personal journey, from her role as a hematologist who unexpectedly came to serve as an expert witness in the Church's evaluation of a miracle to her research as a historican on the origins, meaning, and functions of saints.Duffin's research, which includes interviews with devotees in both North America and Europe, focuses on how people have taken the saints with them as they moved both within Italy and beyond. She shows that veneration of Cosmas and Damian has spread beyond immigrant traditions to fill important functions in healthcare and healing. Duffin's conclusions provide essential insights into medical history, sociology, anthropology, and popular religion, as well as the current medical debate over spiritual healing. Medical Saints draws on medical history and Roman Catholic traditions, but extends to universal observations about the behaviors of sick people and the formal responses to individual illness from collectivities in religion, medicine, and history.
255 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 3, 2019
The subject of medical miracles and Catholicism is a hobby of mine. I've always been a firm believer that religion must be endorsed by science if it is to be valid and this is, to some, saying that you need to make sure you set traps for Santa. However, it is the source of my faith and I've very much enjoyed studying the process of the Catholic Church's testing for miracles even if it's sometimes disappointing as an organization [I am no longer Catholic due to certain scandals-Note].
Jacalyn Duffin is an interesting woman as she is an atheist who was used by the Catholic Church for testing a saint's miracle's science. The process for determining a saint is, much to the surprise of many, that at least two people (previously 3) must pray to them and receive a scientifically inexplicable miracle. For a lot of people, this is akin to magic rather than what they believe the Church should be standing for but others point out that it is one of the few religious institutions that attempts to put its mysticism to the test--so to speak.
The story of how Jacalyn was tapped, her incredulity at running the tests despite not being any sort of believer let alone Catholic, and the results occupy a small portion of the book. Nevertheless, it remains a fascinating story. Jacalyn was not persuaded to adopt the Christian faith by events but developed a fascination with the subject of medical miracles as well as how believers interact with the medical sciences.
So, she wrote this book about Cosmas and Damian the twin saints of medicine. It's a somewhat colorful travellog about her experiences visiting Canadian communities which revere these saints and how they impact their belief in medicine. It also talks about her fellow scientists being skeptical or sometimes hostile about her study of religion's relationship to medicine (or lack thereof).
I found the book enjoyable but a large part of it after her discussion of her "miracle test" was mostly a story about a fish out of water Anglo woman dealing with very ethnic Italian communities. Humorous but not very enlightening historical wise. There's also some good bits about discussing whether or not the twins had any relationship to past Grecian deities or twin figures in mythology.
8/10
Jacalyn Duffin is an interesting woman as she is an atheist who was used by the Catholic Church for testing a saint's miracle's science. The process for determining a saint is, much to the surprise of many, that at least two people (previously 3) must pray to them and receive a scientifically inexplicable miracle. For a lot of people, this is akin to magic rather than what they believe the Church should be standing for but others point out that it is one of the few religious institutions that attempts to put its mysticism to the test--so to speak.
The story of how Jacalyn was tapped, her incredulity at running the tests despite not being any sort of believer let alone Catholic, and the results occupy a small portion of the book. Nevertheless, it remains a fascinating story. Jacalyn was not persuaded to adopt the Christian faith by events but developed a fascination with the subject of medical miracles as well as how believers interact with the medical sciences.
So, she wrote this book about Cosmas and Damian the twin saints of medicine. It's a somewhat colorful travellog about her experiences visiting Canadian communities which revere these saints and how they impact their belief in medicine. It also talks about her fellow scientists being skeptical or sometimes hostile about her study of religion's relationship to medicine (or lack thereof).
I found the book enjoyable but a large part of it after her discussion of her "miracle test" was mostly a story about a fish out of water Anglo woman dealing with very ethnic Italian communities. Humorous but not very enlightening historical wise. There's also some good bits about discussing whether or not the twins had any relationship to past Grecian deities or twin figures in mythology.
8/10
Displaying 1 of 1 review