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Pikachu Straight forward account of the events,a skeptoid hypothesis,amended but alas falsely
Author Brian Dunning proposes his own version of what might have happened, though he admits: "We can't say that the Miracle of Calanda is not genuine, and we can't prove that Miguel Juan Pellicer's leg was not miraculously restored. But we can say the evidence we have falls short, and is perfectly consistent with no miracle having taken place.” He also claims that "there is no documentation or witness accounts confirming his leg was ever gone." He presents an alternative explanation in which Pellicer's leg did not develop gangrene during the five days at the hospital at Valencia. Instead, he spent the next 50 days convalescing, during which he was unable to work, and so turned to begging, and discovered that having a broken leg was a boon. After his leg had mended, Dunning proposes Pellicer decided that if a broken leg helped, a missing leg would be better. Traveling to Zaragoza, he bound his right foreleg up behind his thigh and for two years played the part of an amputee beggar. Later, back at his parents home in Calanda, forced to sleep in a different bed, his ruse was discovered, and the story of the miracle was a way to save face. Dunning asserts "that no evidence exists that his leg was ever amputated — or that he was even treated at all —
at the hospital in Zaragoza other than his own word. He named three doctors there, but for some reason there is no record of their having been interviewed by either the delegation or the trial."[3]However, according to the transcription of the canonical process, two surgeons involved, Juan de Estanga and Diego Millaruelo, were indeed interviewed, as well as the assistant surgeon Juan Lorenzo Garcia and the hospital's priest overseer Pascual del Cacho. All said, under oath, that the leg of Miguel Pellicer was really amputated.[4]The Skeptoid article (author Brian Dunning) has subsequently published a correction to the original article.[5] In the correction, it is accepted that: "Two doctors named by Pellicer (Estanga and Millaruelo) were interviewed in the trial. However, neither said they'd been involved with the amputation of his leg". They also criticized the fact that according to them, the trial was held with a predetermined conclusion to prove something miraculous had taken place, same with the making of the Church’s transcripts, and not to investigate what had actually occurred.[6]But contrary to this statement, the canonical transcript does state that Estanga was involved with the medical care and surgery of Miguel Pellicer:
"Licentiate Juan de Estanga applied the various medicines to him, and seeing that they did not appropriate them, he knows, and this depository saw that the said Licentiate Juan de Estanga resolved to cut off said leg, because he found no other remedy for the said [Miguel] Juan Pellicero... [Diego Millaruelo] helped the execution, and saw it cut off, and this he said to be true per juramentum [under oath]."[4]:51–52
