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By Jacalyn Duffin
285 pp, $29.95
New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-1953-3650-4

JAMA. 2009;301(24):2599-2600.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Miracles of healing are among the complex historical strands that have become established in Western consciousness through the long-pervasive culture of Christianity. They may not always be at the front of the mind as individuals pray to St Jude or wonder at a depiction of an arrow-riddled St Sebastian, but miracles of healing have formed one of the fundamental qualifications for sainthood since the Middle Ages. The importance of such miracles in the process of making saints, and the role that physicians have played and continue to play in the confirmation of miracles, are the subject of Jacalyn Duffin's latest book.

Based on an analysis of more than 1400 miracles dating from the 16th to the end of the 20th centuries, Medical Miracles uncovers a deep commitment to scientific evidence as the dominant feature of the process of canonization. This phenomenon dates back to the 16th century, when saints and . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Anne Hardy, PhD, Reviewer
Wellcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine
University College London
London, United Kingdom
a.hardy@ucl.ac.uk

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