In the past, people have tried some very strange things in order to heal themselves or others of terrible injuries or diseases. Doctors would treat patients with useless and disgusting concoctions created through guesswork, surgeons (who, in the early days, were also part-time barbers), performed rudimentary operations - often with fatal outcomes, and pretty much any vaguely serious ailment would land you with a dire prognosis.
Thankfully, we don't have to deal with all that stuff anymore, as we now have a pretty good understanding of how medicine works.
And yet, even now, we have people who reject mainstream medicine, and instead rely on their own resources to fix whatever problems they have. Leslie Gibson, a former therapist, is one such person, and she believes that her "alternative" method of healing actually cured her father of cancer.
"My father, Mac Gibson, 81, has just become one of only five per cent of people diagnosed with lung cancer to live ten years or more. This grim statistic has barely improved in 40 years," Gibson explains in a piece she wrote for the Daily Mail. "Yet the only treatment he's had is alternative therapy and supplements, including bio-energy healing — where the practitioner moves their hands around your (fully-clothed) body but doesn't touch you — from me."
More than a decade ago, Gibson's father was given less than a year to live, and was told that there was no cure for the strain of cancer he had. Rather than be disheartened by the news, however, Gibson took an unconventional approach to dealing with her father's situation.
"I realise many will roll their eyes in disbelief, and I understand people's scepticism," writes the mother-of-two, "but the medical scans that testify to Dad's recovery, and the amazement of his doctor and consultant, proves to me our story must be told."
You see, Gibson believes she has healing powers.
"I first became aware of my unusual 'gift' as a child," she says. When our pet cat became ill, I sensed she had cystitis before her symptoms became obvious. The vet confirmed my intuition and prescribed a course of antibiotics."
She also claims to have healed her mother's tendonitis, and went on to heal so many other people that she got the nickname, "Magic Hands". However, rather than embrace her so-called ability, Gibson says she refrained from using it, and actually felt very uncomfortable about having been apparently bestowed with such a gift.
Later on in life, however, she "got a Diploma in Bio-Energy Therapy" and went on to work with "doctors, teachers, scientists, sales executives — even former soldiers." She claims to have cured people (and animals!) for whom other medical intervention was totally unsuccessful - her father being one of them.
"Of course," she admits, "not everyone I saw made a recovery — some were terminally ill and died — but most reported an improvement."
Sure enough, in the case of her father, the elderly man's symptoms disappeared within six months, and - after being monitored for five years - he was deemed to be relatively healthy.
"My father was discharged in February 2012," Gibson says. "[His doctor] said: 'Your father was diagnosed with cancer quite unequivocally. But it didn't behave in the way we'd expect. We'd expect it to at least double within a year. We've never seen lung tumours shrink like this without treatment.'"
Who knows: perhaps Gibson does have healing powers. Perhaps this was just the placebo effect in action. Or perhaps this happens more often than we think, but we don't always attribute the recovery to magic powers. Whatever it was, though, we're glad to hear that Gibson's father is still alive and well, and we hope he lives happily and healthily for many more years to come.
