What happens when someone believes that she or he has been the beneficiary of a miraculous cure? Is this to be interpreted as a culturally situated behavior, a product of the socially conditioned mind? Or is there something within the mind-body nexus that requires us to look for physical changes that subtend a claimed cure? This book is an investigation of the belief in the possibility of miracle cures, and of their possible physiological dimensions. The disciplinary range that the author deploys is therefore ambitious, taking in cultural history, social anthropology, behavioral science, psychology, and physiology. Scott achieves an intelligent balance between his competing disciplinary inputs, and the result is a stimulating synthesis that raises some intriguing questions—for historians of popular religion, especially premodern religion, not necessarily answerable questions—about the intersections between science and culture within religious practice and belief. Drawing on medieval and modern evidence of the cult of the saints and pilgrimage, the author argues that the lessons of social anthropology and behavioral science should be applied to our understanding of what happens when a miracle cure is sought and claimed. He rather overstates the extent to which this approach is new. But this angle results in a coherent and well-structured book that holds one's attention throughout. Particularly welcome is the author's avoidance of the easy skepticism of modern medical science when confronted with claims about miracle cures.

The book is divided into two parts. The first sets the scene in its discussions of medieval and modern cult centers, of the role of saints in Christian belief (the book focuses solely on the Latin Christian tradition), and of pilgrimage. These sequences are all derived from the secondary literature. But that secondary literature is up to date, apposite, and mobilized with some flair. Scott toggles back and forth between the evidence of medieval and modern cult centers a shade too readily at times, flattening the contours of the Christian engagement with the miraculous across different times and cultures. But as a work of generalization the book succeeds in making a number of measured and observant points. The discussion of Marian vision cults in the nineteenth century is particularly well done; the experience of Bernadette Soubirous and the growth of Lourdes as a major pilgrimage site are the subject of one of the strongest portions of the book. Scott's exploration of the physical conditions in which medieval people lived their lives can nudge toward the overdrawn but is judicious in its overall conclusions. So too is the analysis of the prominence among those claiming cures at miracle shrines of people “at the margins of disability” whose stress-induced or psychosomatic conditions are especially amenable to relief in the act of pilgrimage and visiting a shrine.

The more challenging second half of the book is an exploration of the scientific bases of miracle cures. In this context, a “cure” is not necessarily to be understood as the elimination of a given medical condition but as a change in the patient's perceptions of her or his symptoms. This much is very familiar to historians of the place of the miraculous in Christian cultures, and is embedded within the distinction between “disease” and “illness” that is a familiar part of scholarly discourse. What is bolder and more arresting in Scott's discussion is the claim that such alleviations may also have a physiological dimension. It is not all in the mind. He reviews medical studies of the operation of the placebo effect, the physiological impacts of emotional states and stress, and the effect of social and situational reinforcement upon a patient's sense of physical improvement. Of particular interest are Scott's discussions of the “poppy fields of the mind,” the pain-controlling mechanisms that shape a sufferer's sense of her or his condition, and of the therapeutic effects of self-efficacy, the feeling of purpose and self-control that can attend directed actions such as pilgrimage. One wonders whether the timescales at stake in the various medical studies that Scott cites always map onto the period of a few weeks or months that was and is the typical duration of a medieval or modern pilgrimage. But his ideas about the links between mind and body in these contexts are richly suggestive. At the very least, they counsel against explanations of religious cultural practices that situate themselves solely in the realm of the mind, overlooking the extent to which the devout believe that the physical world, including their own bodies and the bodies of others, enter into a reinforcing feedback loop with beliefs and customary behaviors. If a non-specialist in medical research, the reader must perforce take Scott's selection of experimental case studies and his presentation of their conclusions at face value. No doubt the picture is more layered and complicated than a work of synthesis can convey. Nonetheless, Scott's book is an engaging and thought-provoking exploration of these matters, and as such is a useful contribution to our understanding of the importance of pilgrimage and the belief in miracle cures in both their medieval and modern forms.