Thought for the Day Healing - One

Anemone in bloom, December 2025.

I recently read a book about Ambroise Paré, a famous French surgeon who was alive in the sixteenth century.

Words that he wrote have stayed in my memory, ‘I dressed the wounds, but God healed them.’

In the book, Paré told of the wounds he saw on the battlefields of Europe, sword and gunshot wounds that the soldiers received in the fighting. He believed that wound healing was one of God’s miracles.

Paré performed surgery on the wounded when it was needed. But in the sixteenth century, he didn’t have much more to offer in the way of treatment than the Good Samaritan did in the parable Jesus gave to us.

The Samaritan went to help the man who was lying injured on the road to Jericho. He cleaned his wounds with wine – there are chemical substances in wine, ‘phenols’, that are lethal to bacteria – and he poured oil onto them – oil is an emollient that stops bacterial growth and multiplication. Then he bound up the man’s wounds, took him to an inn and cared for him.

Help. Care. Cleaning and binding of wounds. Rest and food. Things that were important in Paré’s time and still are today.

But over and above these essential things, something else is needed. Jesus’ first disciples would have prayed for healing – they knew that it was God’s gift. St James the Apostle wrote, ‘Is any sick among you? ... The prayer of faith shall save the sick ... and the Lord shall raise him up.’