Extra-Dispensary Perceptions

By Peter Stoler

HEALING: A DOCTOR IN SEARCH OF A MIRACLE by WILLIAM A. NOLEN, M.D. 308 pages. Random House. $8.95.

Dr. William A. Nolen, author of The Making of a Surgeon (1970), is hardly the first member of his profession to debunk faith healing, but he is the first to write open-mindedly about metaphysical medicine. He became so imbued with investigatory zeal that he subjected himself to a "psychic operation." The result of his two years of research is a book that should serve as a warning to any patient who prefers spirits to science.

Nolen, who practices surgery in Luchfield, Minn. (pop. 5,262), admits that psychic cures can be impressive. He watched as people in a Minneapolis auditorium flocked onstage to claim that they had been cured by Faith Healer Kathryn Kuhlman, who is neither an ordained minister nor a physician but heads a Pittsburgh-based foundation that bears her name. Followup, however, showed that Kuhlman's cures were something less than miraculous. Sufferers from migraine headaches, which are often caused by emotional problems, did feel relief after the healing service. So did people with bursitis, a painful but transient joint inflammation, and a few with multiple sclerosis, a cyclical disease that often gets better before it gets worse. But cancer victims remained noticeably unhealed. One cancer patient, who felt so good during the service witnessed by Nolen that she exercised onstage, died of the disease four months later.

Nolen does not believe that Miss Kuhlman and many other faith healers are consciously dishonest. But he has no use for the psychic surgeons who "operate" in the Philippines, often on desperate patients who have spent plenty of money to get there. He watched several of these sleight-of-hand artists scratch their patients with deftly concealed mica flecks to give the impression that they had made incisions by sheer psychic energy. Nolen also discovered that the healers simulated blood with betel-nut juice, and quickly disposed of all tissues supposedly removed during their operations to prevent laboratory analysis.

Concealed Blob. Finally, Nolen, who had not revealed his identity, tested Filipino healers by undergoing surgery himself for high blood pressure. Before the operation began, he noticed his "surgeon" palming a reddish-yellow object. During the operation, he watched the psychic double up his hands so that it would look as if they were inside Nolen's body. Nolen, who knows a little anatomy, was not fooled: the surgeon's hands never even penetrated his skin. Nor was Nolen impressed by the results of the operation. The surgeon held up the blob he had been concealing in his hand and told Nolen he had removed a tumor. Nolen, who has removed enough tumors to know what one looks like, recognized the tissue as a lump of fat, probably from a chicken.

Despite these discoveries, Healing is not an angry book. For one thing, Nolen recognizes that it is often doctors themselves who drive patients to the healers: "Some healers offer patients more warmth and compassion than physicians do." More important, Nolen acknowledges that, in some cases, the healers actually heal. Faith healers can and often do cure psychosomatic ailments. But they cannot cure organic illnesses. The problem is that the psychics as well as their patients frequently do not know the difference. Doctors do, or at least should. sbPeter Stoler

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