Nova: James Randi: Secrets of thet Psychics TV - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Christopher Hitchens - The Borgias TV - Richard Wiseman - Strange But True? TV - Lorraine Ham - Richard Dawkins TV - William Shakespeare - Seneca - Marcel Proust - Francis Bacon - In Search of … TV -
During the 1980s I entered a world that I found filled with fantasy and ripe with abuses: the world of faith healing … Peter Popoff Ministries … pulling in nearly $4 million a year … Popoff was being prompted by his wife through a wireless ear-piece; she got her information through prayer-cards … Nova: James Randi: Secrets of the Psychics, PBS 1993
The soul is healed by being with children. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If Jesus could heal a blind person he happened to meet, then why not heal blindness? Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p2
Look at those hands – the hands of a healer. The Borgias s2e5: The Choice, Migeletto’s mum, Showtime 2012
We went along to look at some psychic surgeons that were operating in the middle of London. Now what these people were claiming was that no matter what the illness was they could make various incisions into the body, release the bad spirits and the person would get well. Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire
A doctor’s surgery in Otley: a Yorkshire town where people aren’t given to exaggerated claims, especially the doctors. When their medical powers can do no more, they’ve come to accept the more unorthodox methods of Lorraine Ham, so much so that Lorraine now works at the surgery. Lorraine says that without even touching, she feels energies in the body, and the healing begins. Strange But True? s1e3: ITV 1994
A person who is positive about his healing can improve more quickly than someone who isn’t. But yet healing can still work with someone who is quite sceptical. We now have a network of healers all over the country who meditate regularly three times a day and we focus on all the people who have written or telephoned and asked for help. Lorraine Ham, televised interview
Elisis Livingstone is a professional faith healer. She runs the Shambala retreat in Glastonbury. For £140 a day she treats patients, including those with terminal cancer, with a mix of meditation, spiritual healing, and the playing of recorded chants. She believes she can alter the structure of DNA. Richard Dawkins: Enemies of Reason: The Irrational Health Service, Channel 4 2007
The Hale Clinic near London’s Harley Street offers a huge array of healing arts – ancient and modern. Many may help you feel better without having real effect in themselves. ibid.
Infirmity doth still neglect all office
Whereto our health is bound. We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body. I’ll forbear,
And am fallen out with my more headier will,
To take the indisposed and sickly fit
For the sound man. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear II ii @267, Lear
The wish for healing has always been half of health. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full. Marcel Proust
A man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well. Francis Bacon, ‘Of Revenge, The Essays or Counsels, Civil & Moral’
Faith healing is a part of modern life. Are the cures it claims to accomplish real? Between religion and medicine the laying on of hands remains a subject of intense controversy. In Search of s5e2 … Faith Healing, Skyfy 1980
We travel to the People’s Republic of China to examine a modern mystery which had its beginnings centuries ago: the ancient medical art of acupuncture. Chinese doctors claim a mysterious energy force they call Chi flows through the human body and controls our health and well-being. They believe this flow can be altered by the insertion of needles at specific points in the body. In Search of s5e9 … Acupuncture
Laughter: one of the most familiar yet least understood of the body’s responses. Scientific examination reveals it to be a mystery. Its role in human behaviour unknown. Recent evidence indicates that laughter may be linked somehow to our mysterious ability to heal ourselves. Is laughter capable of keeping us well? In Search of s5e12 … Laugh Therapy