Danny
Gallagher
Seventh
Son
of
the
Seventh
Son
|
 |
|
Ireland's
Miracle Healer
Danny hails
from Maghera, County Derry, and is the seventh son of the seventh son. According
to ancient Celtic Lore, the seventh son possesses the power to heal people by
simply touching them. When he was eight years old, Danny said, he had a vivid
dream communicating his strange power over illness.
Danny made
no use of his healing powers for many years after his visionary dream. When
he finished school he bought himself an ice-cream van. The familiar chimes did
not ring long in Danny's hometown before he performed his first cure. The patient
was a tiny crippled girl for whom he always saved a free ice cream. The wonderful
story of the cure was reported by the local newspaper and Danny's life underwent
a metamorphosis.
He obtained
an immediate following among the local inhabitants where the tradition of, if
not necessarily the belief in, the powers of the seventh son is deep-rooted
through generations. As people began to claim more cures, the national media
began to take notice, at first concentrating efforts on exposing him as a fraud,
later supporting him with exclusive accounts. Hundreds of letters and telephone
calls were now coming daily from England. He eventually decided to take the
boat there as thousands of Irish before him have done. But what he initially
intended as a tour came to an abrupt halt in the industrial heartland around
Birmingham, because of the great demand there for his services.
One cure
in the Midlands of England did more to enchance Danny's reputation than any
cure before or since. This was a cure of Jean Pritchett, a 40-year-old housewife
who had been blind for 22 years from what was diagnosed as retinitis pigmentosa.
She had visited specialists all over Britain without finding help. Her cure
caused an immediate sensation in the popular press, attaining front page headlines
in The
News Of The World
on October 31, 1976. The medical profession, however, was immediately critical.
One specialist expressed the opinion that Mrs. Pritchett had suffered from a
case of hysterical blindness which was probably brought on by autosuggestion.
The Pritchett "miracle" was followed a month later by Gallagher's
equally remarkable cure of Kathleen Bailey from the village of Dawley, near
Shrewsbury, England. Mrs. Bailey, a 29-year-old mother of three, had been confined
to a wheelchair with degeneration after a spinal injury at work 11 years before.
The condition did not respond to medical treatment and grew progressively worse.
"I was virtually a cripple," she said in an article in the Shropshire
Star for December 9,1976. "I could not
do anything." Friends and relatives persuaded her to visit Gallagher at
his clinic in Erdington, Birmingham. After treatment by the Irish healer she
was able to leave her wheelchair. A picture of her in an article in the Shropshire
Star, shows her bending to touch her toes. A consultant at the Shropshire
Orthopedic Hospital at Gobowen, a small town near the Welsh border, described
her recovery as "incredibly dramatic."
It should
be stressed however, that while successfully helping thousands to better health,
Danny does not cure everyone.
"An
Unassuming Irish Man"
Quoted from Chris Tarrant (British TV Presenter)
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To read more stories from press around the world or to contact
Danny. Click the links at the top of the page.