NZ Skeptics Articles

Articles tagged with "healer"

Crystal Healing that works?

21 December 2020

In one of our Facebook groups this week there was a recent discussion started by Donald Pettitt about his visit to a “crystal healer” to help with issues he's been having with his balance:

The Spiritual Science of Alpha Beta

1 February 2010

This excerpt from an_ NZ Skeptic _article of 20 years ago reviewed an evening with self-styled New Zealand 'magnetic healer' Colin Lambert. Presumably the pseudonym 'Alpha Beta' was used to minimise the chances of legal action should Lambert have considered anything in it defamatory. Lambert died in 2006, but his disciples maintain a website, www.magnetichealers.org.nz, where some of his books and CD's can be purchased, and workshops are promoted.

Faith and expectation in the placebo effect

1 August 1990

The German physician, H. Rheder described the following clinical trial in 1955. In the local hospital were three patients under his care; one suffering from chronic gall bladder disease, a second from severe pancreatitis associated with weight loss, constipation and depression, and the third had an inoperable uterine cancer, with anaemia, weakness and massive accumulation of fluid in the abdomen.

Big Time Faith Healing, Well intentioned or deliberate Fraud?

1 August 1987

Faith healing, like the fundamentalism it is often associated with, is a generic term, rather than a specific one. The New Guinea tribesman consulting a witch doctor for a potent spell to cure him, the quiet prayer meeting for a friend in hospital, the Indian girl who immerses herself in the waters of the Ganges to aid her infertility are all exercising faith healing. The oft- reported efficacy of placebos on people suffering from chronic pain serves as a reminder that the power of faith may sometimes outdo rational, modern medicine.