Hydra's Heads and Medusa's Blood
27
those cared for by others. He observed and used his powers informally
for years, until, forced to emigrate after the 1956 Hungarian revolution,
he settled in Canada and came to the attention of Dr. Bernard Grad, a
biologist at McGill University. Grad found that Estebany could acceler-
ate the healing of measured skin wounds made on the backs of mice, as
compared with controls. He didn't let Estebany touch the animals, but
only place his hands near their cages, because handling itself would have
fostered healing. Estebany also speeded up the growth of barley plants
and reactivated ultraviolet-damaged samples of the stomach enzyme
trypsin in much the same way as a magnetic field, even though no
magnetic field could be detected near his body with the instruments
of that era.
The types of healing we've considered so far have trance and touch as
common factors, but some modes don't even require a healer. The spon-
taneous miracles at Lourdes and other religious shrines require only a
vision, fervent prayer, perhaps a momentary connection with a holy rel-
ic, and intense concentration on the diseased organ or limb. Other re-
ports suggest that only the intense concentration is needed, the rest
being aids to that end. When Diomedes, in the fifth book of the Iliad,
dislocates Aeneas' hip with a rock, Apollo takes the Trojan hero to a
temple of healing and restores full use of his leg within minutes. Hector
later receives the same treatment after a rock in the chest fells him. We
could dismiss these accounts as the hyperbole of a great poet if Homer
weren't so realistic in other battlefield details, and if we didn't have
similar accounts of soldiers in recent wars recovering from "mortal"
wounds or fighting on while oblivious to injuries that would normally
cause excruciating pain. British Army surgeon Lieutenant Colonel H. K.
Beecher described 225 such cases in print after World War II. One
soldier at Anzio in 1943, who'd had eight ribs severed near the spine by
shrapnel, with punctures of the kidney and lung, who was turning blue
and near death, kept trying to get off his litter because he thought he
was lying on his rifle. His bleeding abated, his color returned, and the
massive wound began to heal after no treatment but an insignificant dose
of sodium amytal, a weak sedative given him because there was no mor-
phine.
These occasional prodigies of battlefield stress strongly resemble the
ability of yogis to control pain, stop bleeding, and speedily heal wounds
with their will alone. Biofeedback research at the Menninger Foundation
and elsewhere has shown that some of this same power can be rapped in
people with no yogic training. That the will can be applied to the body's
ills has also been shownb by
Norman Cousing in his resolute conquest by