St. Anthony's fire

Abstract

In studying medicine, encounters with relics of the past in the shape of eponyms often make one stop and wonder as to the association between the medical syndrome or term concerned and the character recalled. It is even still more fascinating to investigate and ponder upon such a correlation when the individual immortalized does not happen to be a physician, surgeon, or alchemist of old, but a complete alien to 'the medical profession; in this case an ascetic, a saint: St. Anthony of Egypt! The close affinity of medicine and pathology to priests and ascetics is as old as man himself; man always sought supernatural aid in his sickness, when therapeutic aid was fruitless or not forthcoming, and the priest mediated his claims and supplications with the deity. With the advent of the Christian era and culture, this did not change, and the taumaturgical powers of various saints and holy men have been invoked in unmerous diseases, plagues, and pestilences of man and beast alike.