they were cases of faith-healing; a phenomenon which recurs in connexion with nearly every form of religious belief, and in every stage of social development. The influence of the spiritual imagination on the bodily state is undeniable. Everyone knows something about the phenomena of Lourdes and Bethshan, healing resorts which, theologically speaking, lie at opposite poles. In a cruder form the same effects are found in connexion with holy wells and relics of the saints.[1] We may go back to the ancients and find wonderful cures reported in the pagan world, from the shrines of Asclepius (the patron deity of physicians). A blind man touches the altar of Aesculapides (as he was called at Rome) on the island of the Tiber and receives his sight.[2] The Emperors Hadrian and Vespasian used to touch for the 'King's evil.'[3]
But can anyone study the miracles of our Lord as a whole (for we must not lose sight of those wrought upon inanimate nature) and feel that they are sufficiently explained by a familiar truth in psychology, viz. that the
