The doctor and the investigation
Dr H Richard Casdorph is an experienced doctor and medical researcher. His CV shows he has published more than a hundred research papers in a career that has spanned almost 6 decades.
In the mid 70s he undertook a research project with a difference. He
interviewed ten people who claimed to have been miraculously healed of
serious conditions. He examined all the case histories - X-rays, medical
reports, etc - and also submitted them to medical specialists for
review.
In all ten cases, the evidence showed that an unusual healing had
taken place after the patient received prayer for healing. The cases
were written up in a book, The Miracles, which includes some of the X-rays.
These were the cases ..... or jump straight to what we can learn.
Lisa Larios
Lisa was diagnosed with cancer of the hip when she was 12, and was
unable to walk unaided. Her family decided chemotherapy was too
traumatic and called it off after one dose. The family were Catholic,
though not very religious, and a family friend invited the family to a
christian healing meeting conducted by 'healing evangelist' Kathryn
Kuhlman. The friend fasted and prayed for a week beforehand.
During the service, Lisa felt a warm feeling in her stomach, and
Kathryn Kuhlman said someone in her section of the auditorium was being
healed from cancer and should stand up. Lisa, against her mother's
wishes, stood up and was able to walk without pain for the first time
since the problem had appeared. Lisa was X-rayed several times after
that, and it became clear that something strange had indeed occurred.
Further X-rays (reproduced in the book) were taken and reviewed by
several doctors, and these showed that Lisa's hip had been fully
restored and the cancer was gone.
Elfrieda Stauffer
Elfrieda was 'critically ill' with chronic rheumatoid arthritis, and
unable to walk or dress herself, when she was taken to a healing meeting
by her husband. She had avoided going because "she did not believe in that kind of thing",
but after much prayer by her husband and urging by some friends, she
agreed to go. During the meeting she felt that parts of her body that
had been in extreme pain were becoming pain-free, and she was able to
move them. Dr Casdorph points out that gradual spontaneous remissions
can occur with this disease, but "she emerged from
this severe disability to complete normalcy within a matter of seconds
or minutes. This is not spontaneous remission."
Marie Rosenberger
In 1970, at age 44, Marie started suffering from severe headaches.
She underwent brain surgery, and a tumour was removed, but the surgeons
could not remove it all, and the biopsy showed is was malignant. The
tumour began to grow back, and Marie was not expected to live. The
family decided to spend an evening praying for her healing and her
husband stayed up all night. He had a vision of the tumour being healed,
but Marie seemed little improved when she woke. However she stopped
taking her medication, and continued to improve, as visits to her
neurosurgeon confirmed, with some amazement, until she was healed. The
book discusses the medical documentation and reproduces arteriograms.
Marion Burgio
When multiple sclerosis first affected Marion in 1958, she was
pregnant and not yet 30. She felt numbness in her hands, kept falling
over, and generally started losing coordination. But it was not
diagnosed for four years, by which time she was deteriorating steadily.
Ten years later, she had bad headaches, a deformed forearm, was
incontinent, had a marked loss of hearing and vision and was unable to
eat or even hold her head up. A friend visited regularly to pray for her
and invited her to a Kathryn Kuhlman healing meeting.
Marion at first refused to go, but eventually was taken in a
wheelchair. She can't remember exactly what happened, but during the
service she found herself standing up, with her back and limbs straight
for the first time in years. She began to walk immediately, and later
her surprised doctor found she had been healed of all symptoms,
including the deformities. She and her husband became strong believers
in Jesus.
Marvin Bird
Arteriosclerotic heart disease was (and I assume still is) the most
common cause of death in the western world. Marvin Bird had his first
heart attack at age 46, and over the next 16 years was hospitalised 17
times because of his heart condition. One artery was completely blocked
and the others were half blocked (as shown in angiograms reproduced in
the book), but he declined a coronary artery bypass because, at age 60,
he didn't think he would survive surgery. He attended a healing meeting
even though he wasn't then a believer, and an assistant, believing he
had been healed, invited him to stand up. He couldn't previously do this
on his own, but now was able to. Doctors later confirmed he was fully
healed, and Marvin started to attend church and believe in Jesus.
Ray Jackson
In 1972, Ray Jackson had a kidney removed in the Duke University
Medical Center because of cancer. He recovered well, but two years later
doctors had to remove a finger because they found cancer had spread
there. Shortly after they found cancer in his spine, pelvis, breastbone
and leg, and this time surgery was out of the question. (Two bone scans
are reproduced in the book.) He was booked in for radiation treatment,
but advised he could expect to live no more than a year.
Many friends were praying for his healing, and before he began the
radiation treatment, he woke in the night to hear a voice tell him he
would be healed. The next day he attended a 'Kathryn Kuhlman miracle
service', during which the pain disappeared instantly. Tests the next
day still showed the lesions, but subsequent tests showed that healthy
new bone had filled in where the lesions had been. This case is notable
because of the wealth of medical detail available from Duke to confirm
the healing.
Pearl Bryant
Pearl was a doctor of speech therapy who had suffered from a range of
medical problems - arthritis, kidney, gall bladder and liver problems -
for most of her life. By the time she was in her sixties she had to
wear long-leg braces whenever she was out of bed because of weak knees
and many falls. Other physical problems (fainting, headaches, nausea and
digestrive problems) also worsened at this time. A devout christian,
she began praying for healing in her late seventies, then finally
managed to get to a healing meeting. During the meeting she felt an
unusual 'grinding' sensation in her body, beginning with her left hip
and gradually moving around her whole body and ending in her neck. She
couldn't take the leg braces off in public to test her healing, but next
morning she was able to walk unaided and regained full movement. She
was fully healed.
Anne Soults
Over just a few weeks, Anne began to have serious problems reading,
speaking and remembering. A series of brain scans (some of which are
reproduced in the book) and visits to different specialists revealed she
had a lesion that was increasing in size, consistent with a tumour.
However following prayer from a prayer group and at a healing service,
further scans showed no evidence of an abnormality. Dr Casdorph
comments: "This lady's brain abnormality was well documented by the standard diagnostic techniques and she was seen by many specialists."
Paul Trousdale
Paul, a successful businessman, was admitted to hospital with severe
gastrointestinal bleeding after fainting several times. He required many
blood transfusions over several days. He had only recently begun to
attend church, and his minister visited one morning and prayed for him.
The minister said that he had been healed, but doctors would not release
him from hospital until his condition was re-tested. All tests showed
the bleeding had ceased and there were no abnormalities. Paul's
condition before and after were "well documented by medical records".
Delores Winder
Delores had severe spinal problems and pain for years, necessitating
four spinal fusions and two cordotomies (a procedure that disables part
of the spinal cord to reduce pain but results in no feeling in the
legs). For fourteen years she wore a body cast and neck brace to relieve
the pain and enable her to walk. At the end of this time, the doctors
told her there was little they could do for her, she had so many
conditions, but that she could prolong her life by staying still in bed,
advice she was unwilling to take.
Although she was a christian, she didn't believe in divine healing,
but she was persuaded to attend a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting. She
experienced a burning sensation in her legs (the first thing she had
felt in her legs for a time) and was completely healed. She was also
strongly renewed in her faith. Dr Casdorph says he has medical records
for Delores "an inch thick" showing seven
serious spinal procedures and the increasingly desperate medical
diagnoses, culminating in the doctor's acceptance that she had "gotten an excellent result physically".
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