The Lourdes medical cures revisited

A Dutch Study of Remarkable Recoveries After Prayer: How to Deal with Uncertainties of Explanation

This article addresses cases of remarkable recoveries related to healing after prayer. We sought to investigate how people who experienced remarkable recoveries re-construct and give meaning to these experiences, and examine the role that epistemic frameworks available to them, play in this process. Basing ourselves on horizontal epistemology and using grounded theory, we conducted this qualitative empirical research in the Netherlands in 2016-2021. It draws on 14 in-depth interviews. These 14 cases were selected from a group of 27 cases, which were evaluated by a medical assessment team at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre. Each of the participants had experienced a remarkable recovery during or after prayer. The analysis of the interviews, which is based on the grounded theory approach, resulted in three overarching themes, placing possible explanations of the recoveries within (1) the medical discourse, (2) biographical discourse, and (3) a discourse of spiritual and religious transformation. Juxtaposition of these explanatory frameworks provides a way to understand better the transformative experience that underlies remarkable recoveries. Uncertainty regarding an explanation is a component of knowing and can facilitate a dialogue between various domains of knowledge.

Alexis Carrel and His Voyage of Discovery: Miracles and the Spirituality of Healing

In the era of positivism and anticlericalism of France's Belle Époque, scientist Alexis Carrel stood in stark contrast as one preoccupied with his faith and its relation to scientific scrutiny. Despite his early adult agnosticism, he sought proof of the divine and chose verification of the miraculous cures reported from the shrine at Lourdes, France. It so happened that on his first visit there, he encountered a truly remarkable "cure" of a young woman in the terminal stages of tubercular peritonitis. On a return visit, for the second time, he witnessed the restoration of sight to a blind child. Throughout the rest of his life, Carrel was struck by the proximity of the supernatural to corporeal interactions. He ultimately found a place for his faith as a parallel pathway and not in juxtaposition to the scientific. This paper chronicles Carrel's evolution of belief and reconciliation of faith and science.

Can you be cured if the doctor disagrees? A case study of 27 prayer healing reports evaluated by a medical assessment team in the Netherlands

THE SETTING: between 2015 and 2020 a medical assessment team evaluated 27 reports of prayer healing in the Netherlands.

OBJECTIVES

Three research questions were formulated. What are the medical and experiential findings? Are there medically remarkable and/or unexplained healings? Which explanatory frameworks can help us understand the findings?

METHODS

The reported healings were analyzed using both medical files and patient narratives, as part of a case study research design compiled by a multidisciplinary research team. An independent team of five medical consultants, representing different fields of expertise, evaluated the 27 case files. According to criteria these were selected from a larger group of 83 received reports. Experiential data was obtained by in-depth interviews and analyzed. Instances of healing could be classified as 'medically remarkable' or 'medically unexplained'. Subsequent analysis was transdisciplinary.

RESULTS

Eleven of the 27 healings assessed were evaluated as 'medically remarkable', none were labelled as 'medically unexplained'. Recurring characteristics were common to some degree in all healings, whether 'medically remarkable' or not: a temporal connection with prayer, instantaneity and unexpectedness of healing, strong emotional and physical manifestations, and a sense of 'being overwhelmed' and transformed. The healings were invariably interpreted as acts of God. Positive effects have persisted for 5 to 33 years, with 2 relapses.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings on remarkable healings do not fit well in the traditional biomedical conceptual framework. All healings exhibited important non-medical aspects, whether or not they were assessed as medically remarkable. We need a broader multi-perspective approach in which all relevant data is considered to be valuable, both experiential and objective. This so-called horizontal epistemology may be helpful when trying to understand the findings, and it may bring about mutual understanding between patients, health practitioners and relevant disciplines.

The Lourdes Pilgrimage and the Impact on Pilgrim Quality of Life

Lourdes, France, is a major site of pilgrimage, particularly for Roman Catholics with illness. The direct impact of pilgrimage on pilgrim quality of life (QOL) has not previously been measured. The present study aimed to measure the impact of pilgrimage to Lourdes on QOL in self-defined "sick pilgrims". The standardised EuroQol EQ-5D-5L questionnaire measured two aspects of QOL, namely a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score of self-rated health and an Index Value Score (IVS) of the five dimensions of QOL, in a group of pilgrims, before (Q1), immediately after (Q2) and two months after (Q3) return from pilgrimage to Lourdes. A total of 93 pilgrims responded at time Q1, 71 at Q2 and 64 at Q3. The VAS scores of self-rated health showed statistically significant improvement at Q2 (p = 0.04), although this was not sustained at Q3. The IVS Scores showed no significant differences at Q2 or Q3. However, at Q2, 67.6% of pilgrims reported their self-rated QOL as "much better" or "better", and this was maintained in 54.7% at Q3. Pilgrims identified "spiritual and religious aspects of pilgrimage", "a sense of togetherness" and "spiritual healing" as having the most significant impact on their QOL. The Lourdes pilgrimage had a statistically significant positive impact on the immediate post-pilgrimage VAS scores of QOL of "sick pilgrims", but this was not sustained two months following pilgrimage. The IVS scores were unchanged. Pilgrims identified beneficial holistic, spiritual and communal aspects of the pilgrimage experience.

The association between the belief in coronavirus conspiracy theories, miracles, and the susceptibility to conjunction fallacy

Previous research has shown that people who endorse conspiracy theories are more prone to the conjunction fallacy: the tendency to perceive conjunct events as more probable than constituent events. The present study examined the relationship between specific beliefs (belief in conspiracy theories, religiosity) and the susceptibility to conjunction errors (CEs) in specific domains. A total of 500 participants was presented with brief scenarios from the domains "coronavirus conspiracy," "miraculous healing," and a control condition. Each scenario included one statement about a separate event and a second statement about two joint events co-occurring. The participants estimated the probability of each statement. Results showed that the number of CEs made in the coronavirus domain was only associated with the belief in conspiracy theories, while general religiosity was only associated with CEs for scenarios describing miraculous healings. The assessed beliefs were not associated with CEs made in the control condition. Results suggest that distinct beliefs are uniquely associated with the susceptibility to conjunction errors in particular domains.

Three cases of hearing impairment with surprising subjective improvements after prayer. What can we say when analyzing them?

AIM

to enhance the understanding of documented mismatches between 'subjective' experiences and 'objective' data in three cases of self-reported instantaneous healing of hearing impairment upon prayer.

METHOD

description of three cases taken out of a larger retrospective case-based study of prayer healing in the Netherlands. In this larger study multiple reported healings were investigated using both medical files and patients' narratives through in-depth interviews. A subset of three cases with dramatic subjective reduction of hearing impairment upon prayer was studied. These patients underwent extensive additional investigations at the audiology center of the Amsterdam University Medical Centre. All data was evaluated by an interdisciplinary medical assessment team, subsequent analysis was transdisciplinary.

RESULTS

the three case histories with self-reported healing after prayer demonstrated a clear mismatch between subjective experiences and objective findings. No measurable improvements were found in four different audiological testing methods. However, in-depth interviews, hetero-anamnesis and a validated questionnaire all confirmed the healings. The medical assessment team could not label these healings as 'medically remarkable' because of absence of measurable 'objective' changes, but they did consider them as 'remarkable in a broader sense'. On expert consultation no equivalents of mismatches to this extent could be found. The healing experiences of our participants involved their entire being with profound positive effects in different domains of their lives, and a perception of a benevolent God who acted upon them. There was a distinctive pattern, labelled by the participants as a healing of mind, soul and body.

CONCLUSIONS

The subjective-objective incongruities that were found were not well understood. We noticed a paradox: the 'objective' measurements did not reflect hearing abilities in daily life where-as 'subjective experiential' data did. The latter could be 'objectified' and validated in various ways. In fact, a rigid distinction between 'objective' and 'subjective' was not relevant here, nor a hierarchy among them. A model leaving room for different causations (horizontal epistemology) complied best with the multi dimensionality we came across.

The discourse on faith and medicine: a tale of two literatures

Research and writing at the intersection of faith and medicine by now include thousands of published studies, review articles, books, chapters, and essays. Yet this emerging field has been described, from within, as disheveled on account of imprecision and lack of careful attention to conceptual and theoretical concerns. An important source of confusion is the fact that scholarship in this field constitutes two distinct literatures, or rather meta-literatures, which can be termed (a) faith as a problematic for medicine and (b) medicine as a problematic for faith. These categories represent distinct theoretical lenses for viewing the intersection of faith and medicine. Observations about these two approaches are offered, along with insights about why the discourse on faith and medicine should become better integrated into discussions of religion and science.

Coping behavior in multiple sclerosis-complementary and alternative medicine: A cross-sectional study

Main Problem

Treatment options for multiple sclerosis (MS) have enlarged tremendously over the last years. Nonetheless, lots of patients look for alternative treatment options. The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is widespread in MS, however, its scientific investigation is limited so far. The aim of the study is to analyse clinical and demographical differences of MS patients in dependency of their CAM utilization as coping strategy.

Methods

A total of 254 patients with a clinically definite MS were examined in a semistructured interview. Additional standardized questionnaires were used to measure different aspects of coping with illness. All patients underwent neurological examination.

Results

About 206 of all enrolled patients are CAM users (81.1%). They have a longer disease duration (8.3 years vs 7.3 years, P = 0.028) and show higher disability (median EDSS 4.0 vs 2.0, P < 0.001) than nonusers. CAM users differed significantly from nonusers in their coping behavior (P = 0.035). Users are brooding more heavily over the disease, looking for more information about MS, and are looking for a sense of their disease in religion more often than nonusers. CAM users are at a higher risk of depression. Almost two‐thirds of CAM users (57.6%) reported positive effects on the well‐being of their state of health.

Conclusion

Coping behavior differs significantly between CAM users and nonusers. CAM utilization is associated with higher disability and depression. More than 80% of our cohort has used alternative or complementary methods. CAM utilization may mirror unmet needs in the treatment of MS.