(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following book review by Tamaqua native Phillip H. Krapf of San Ramon, Ca., examines 'Miracle Cures - Saints, Pilgrimage, and the Healing Powers of Belief,' by author Robert A. Scott, a Tamaqua native and 1953 graduate of Tamaqua Senior High School. Scott taught at Princeton and Stanford Universities and for 18 years served as deputy director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. The book was released this year by The Regents of the University of California, published by the University of California Press, Berkeley.)

By Phillip H. KrapfOne of the more fascinating aspects of Robert A. Scott's book lies beyond the immediacy of the title. Thomas Hobbes famously described life during the Middle Ages as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It is this wretched slice of life that Scott portrays in vivid detail as he leads the reader on a journey that is both horrific, mesmerizing and enlightening.The narrative of the ghastly conditions that most humans of that era were forced to live under is at once gruesome and yet shockingly engrossing. When those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a world where 21st Century medicine is practiced, the everyday ailments that plague us pale into insignificance when compared to the threats to body and spirit that our forebears faced. Forget your restless leg syndrome, your overactive bladder, and your erectile dysfunction. Some of the ailments that the author cites as "widespread disease-related morbidity," which also tended to make daily life just plain miserable, include "intestinal and pulmonary infections, typhus, and measles; sicknesses arising from malnutrition; mental and nervous disorders; leprosy, skin infections, smallpox, dropsy (edema), abscesses, and tumors of the liver; syphilis, tuberculosis, quinsy … 'pin and web' (an eye disease), fever … earaches, toothaches, nosebleeds, fainting spells, nausea, diarrhea, stomach aches, hemorrhoids, arthritis and worms; and diseases of the spleen, chest, lungs, and urinary tract." And that's not even considering the Black Death, widely thought to have been bubonic plague, which is estimated to have wiped out up to 60 percent of Europe's population at one point.Then, of course, there were crop failures and resultant famines along with malnourishment, vitamin deficiencies that brought on such things as scurvy, chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, joint pain, rashes, bleeding gums. Some diseases, sometimes lethal, could be attributed to parasites of various variety, including bedbugs and lice. And streets strewn with garbage and raw sewage tossed out from the fronting hovels - along with the attendant rats and flies - weren't exactly conducive to pleasant evenings of relaxation while sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair.The list goes on and on.To this reviewer, the true miracle is that the human race actually survived the hardships of life in the Middle Ages, as described by the author, to reach the comparatively comfortable living conditions that the majority - at least in the industrialized world - enjoy today.So where did a sick or injured person turn when "Practitioners of medicine consisted of a ragtag collection of barbers, herbalists, folk healers, astrologers, dentists, witches and quacks"? Why, to the saints, of course.A deep belief in God was widely held in Europe during medieval times, which meant that the Catholic Church - especially before the Reformation - was intrinsically involved in the field of medicine. That is, since the human body was the creation of God, at least to the medieval mind, oversight of that body in dealing with illness or injury involved the Church. The person who inhabited that body also had a religious duty to take care of it and treat it with the respect required of any of God's creations.But why not turn directly to God himself, who most people believed was the sole source of miracles, rather than go through an intermediary? According to the author, taking one's supplications directly to God was a prospect too terrifying to contemplate."Religious doctrine portrayed God as an all-powerful, incorporeal being, the mightiest of imaginable forces beyond history, immanent in the world, a formless, anonymous, eternal, disembodied, luminous essence that was nowhere in particular yet everywhere at once and forever, a distant and severe power, quick to anger."It is understandable how a lowly peasant would be intimidated and frightened to the core of his being by such an entity. Yet there was a way to reach God with one's entreaties, even if it was a sort of roundabout approach. God conferred upon saints a special state of grace as a result of certain actions they took and the suffering they endured on behalf of the faith, according to the medieval belief system. From this status of intimacy, God would look favorably upon a supplicant's appeals because of his admiration for the saint rather than because of the petitioner's virtues.It is easy to imagine why belief in a supernatural Creator would be almost universal, since this was a time before Darwin, Galileo, Newton and a host of other science luminaries who did so much to lead thinking people out of the mind-set of superstition and into the more rational light of the natural world.As a modern man of science and scholarship, the author attempts to understand - and to convey that understanding to the reader - how Christian saints and the religious shrines dedicated to them could have anything to do with curing physical and mental ailments. Scott is an intellectual with a distinguished background in academia. As such, the reader might expect him to attempt to debunk any claims of medical cures. However, that is not the case, although he also does not go to the other end of the spectrum and attempt to validate such claims, either.Instead, Scott employs his training and background as a sociologist to try to help us - and perhaps himself - understand why untold thousands set off on oftentimes extremely uncomfortable and difficult pilgrimages covering hundreds and sometimes several thousands of miles, and why millions have continued such journeys up to the present. He offers some compelling reasons - at least for those who undertook the journeys in the past - including such solemn ones as devotion to the faith and a sincere belief that a cure for an illness could be attained, to such insubstantial motives as merely wanting to get away for a while, an opportunity to travel on a subsidized vacation of sorts.The author admits that he is not particularly religious, a claim that I found mildly surprising - and which I will examine in a bit more detail further down. But he also confesses that he has little accord for those who "dismiss all such claims of cure as hogwash." As such, he takes a decidedly impartial stand that allows both believer and nonbeliever alike to find value in his findings. He contends that the faithful felt confident in appealing to the saints to heal them because those appeals sometimes worked, depending upon the conditions and circumstances.He also offers a number of interesting non-miraculous factors that might be considered in pondering actual improvements in health of those who made the pilgrimages. There is, of course, the placebo effect. Based upon his descriptions of the generally squalid living conditions of the time, it is entirely credible to accept that such a state of affairs could have been the very cause of the widespread illnesses themselves. Thus, it stands to reason that removing oneself from that environment might just bring an improvement of health.Then there are the effects of fresh air, clean water, perhaps a healthier diet including fresh fruits and vegetables, and the lessening of stress bolstered by a heartfelt belief in the power of the saints in facilitating healing, all of which could have a positive effect on health.I read the book for several reasons:I was curious about how the author intended to convince me that any miracle cures he might cite were spiritually credible and couldn't instead be attributable to more prosaic and less supernatural factors, if that indeed was his intent. It turned out, as I got into the book, that it was not. Both believer and nonbeliever alike can come away from the book better informed while still maintaining their beliefs.Another reason for buying the book, I am familiar with the author. Full disclosure: Robert A. Scott and I were schoolmates from the 8th through 11th grades. I had corresponded with him briefly around 2003 when his book on medieval cathedrals hit the stores, but I haven't seen him since 1952 when we were in the 11th grade. If memory serves, he was quite involved in youth activities within the local Presbyterian Church, which is why I took particular note of his comment in the book that he was not especially religious.His latest book is erudite and engaging and I - and apparently the author - leave it up to the reader to draw his/her own conclusions about whether there is a case to be made for a belief in miraculous cures.