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.


Author: Jacalyn Duffin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 05/31/2013
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780199743179

Review Citation(s):
Choice 12/01/2013

About the Author

Jacalyn Duffin is Professor in the Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine at Queen's University in Kingston, where she has taught in medicine, philosophy, history, and law for more than twenty years. She has served as President of both the American Association for the History of Medicine and the
Canadian Society for the History of Medicine. The author of seven other books and many research articles, she holds a number of awards and honours for research, writing, service, and teaching. Her most recent book is an analysis of the medical aspects of canonization, Medical Miracles; Doctors,
Saints, and Healing, 1588-1999, OUP 2009.

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