sts, is the fact that cures were invariably attempted after
earthly medicine had been exhausted.[22]

Islam, Buddhism, and other religions have their shrines where some
pilgrims are undoubtedly cured, but Christianity seems to have had the
most varied and numerous collection. As early as the latter part of
the fourth century miraculous powers were ascribed to the images of
Jesus and the saints which adorned the walls of most of the churches
of the time, and tales of wonderful cures were related of them. The
intercessions of saints were invoked, and their relics began to work
miracles.[23]

St. Cyril, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and others of the early church
fathers of note maintained that the relics of the saints had great
efficacy in the cure of diseases. St. Augustine tells us: "Besides
many other miracles, that Gamaliel in a dream revealed to a priest
named Lacianus the place where the bones of St. Stephen were buried;
that those bones being thus discovered, were brought to Hippo, the
diocese of which St. Augustine was bishop; that they raised five
persons to life; and that, although only a portion of the miraculous
cures they effected had been registered, the certificates drawn up in
two years in the diocese, and by the orders of the saint, were nearly
seventy. In the adjoining diocese of Calama they were incomparably
more numerous."[24] This great and intellectual man also mentions and
evidently credits the story that some innkeeper of his time put a drug
into cheese which changed travellers who partook of it into domestic
animals, and he further asserts after a personal test that peacock's
flesh will not decay.

St. Ambrose declared that "the precepts of medicine are contrary to
celestial science, watching, and prayer." When the conflict between
St. Ambrose and the Arian Empress Justina was at its height, the
former declared that it had been revealed to him that relics were
buried in a certain spot which he indicated. When the earth was
removed, there was exposed a tomb filled with blood, and containing
two gigantic skeletons with their heads severed from their bodies.
These were pronounced to be the remains of St. Gervasius and St.
Protasius, two martyrs of gigantic physical proportions, who were said
to have been beheaded about three centuries before. To prove beyond
doubt the genuineness of these relics, a blind man was restored to
sight by coming in contact with them, and demoniacs were also cured
thereby