Abstract
From the earliest times, medical practitioners have sought divine help and support to aid them as they go about their busy rounds. In Christian Europe of the High Middle Ages, saints played a central role in the everyday life of the ailing. Alongside healing attempts which involved magic, folk or scientifically-based medicine, the invocation of specific patron saints for the curing of ailments was a widespread practice. The miracles of vision performed by saints over the past two millennia are listed and interpreted by various reviewers along faith healing, spontaneous recovery, or physicians acting as saints. The individuals honored as patron saints of medicine were practicing physicians who served their patients and their communities well. It is their role as saints to represent the spiritual element in the healing process as well as personifying the charitable idealism of the good physician, and therefore are models for humanitarian physicians, with the ultimate model of healing being Jesus Christ.
Highlights
Since Antiquity, medical practitioners have invoked divine help to assist them in the care of the sick
Based on Medline review conducted up to 2008, we present an overview of patron saints for systemic disorders, for ophthalmic diseases, and present the miracles attributed to various saints explaining them by spontaneous cure, faith healing, or cure by expert medical practitioners
There are nearly 300 saints whose names are associated with diseases or cure of the sick and this relationship has come about either by some miracle attributed to them or by some aspect of their martyrdom [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Summary
Since Antiquity, medical practitioners have invoked divine help to assist them in the care of the sick. Throughout the history of the Church, this invocation of help was mediated by various saints associated with specific diseases. Based on Medline review conducted up to 2008, we present an overview of patron saints for systemic disorders, for ophthalmic diseases, and present the miracles attributed to various saints explaining them by spontaneous cure, faith healing, or cure by expert medical practitioners
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