Academia.edu has alerted me to an update to one of Joe Marino’s useful and comprehensive bibliographies of works related to the Shroud, this one being “Individual Medical Doctors’ Viewpoints on the Authenticity of the Shroud of Turin.”1 The two latest entries, both via YouTube, are interviews with Philippe Boxho (misspelled Boxo), and Alfonso Canabal. That brings Marino’s total to 63 who think the Shroud authentic and 4 who think it isn’t. More recently, the British Society For The Turin Shroud has chosen a top ten to represent medical opinion on the Shroud,2 also, presumably, to try to demonstrate that the Shroud is so realistic and so clear that precise anatomical and pathological details can be observed on it, with the corollary that no medieval craftsman would have known enough to depict them so accurately. Unfortunately, the huge variety of conflicting observations and disagreements between the ‘medical doctors’ in fact shows that almost no clear and detailed observations can be actually be made, and the alleged conformity with anatomical and pathological accuracy, and thus the impossibility of a medieval provenance, is spurious.
Very few of the ‘individual medical doctors’ have made any independent study of the Shroud; for most, their evangelical zeal has rendered that completely unnecessary, so they simply quote the findings of one or more of their predecessors without any serious review, or else they consider what they think “would have happened” under various hypothetical circumstances and fitted those ideas to the image as best they can. Even those who have studied it in detail have usually, in the words of James Malcolm Cameron, been “treating the Shroud as a photograph,” rather than querying whether it is or not. Their diagnoses are akin to those who think the Mona Lisa may have suffered from hypothyroidism because her skin looks a bit yellow, or that Botticelli’s Venus had anaemia because her skin is so white, without considering that these characteristics may be artefacts of the paintings rather than properties of the bodies they were modelled on.
For what it’s worth, here’s a review of some of the more significant to have published their opinions: if anyone would like to know more about others – the ones who think the ‘water’ of the blood and water came from Jesus’s stomach, for example, or the ones who see exit wounds for the spear in the front or back image – please let me know in the comments.
Yves Delage and Paul Vignon
The pioneers of anatomical and pathological examination of the Shroud, in the 19th century, were zoologists rather than specifically human medical doctors, but no less authoritative for that (Delage wrote a significant treatise on the function of the semi-circular canals in the human ear, for example), and with the facilities of the Sorbonne and the Museum of Natural History at their disposal for experimenting. It seems that both men were more or less gripped by the Shroud after the publication of Secondo Pia’s photo, and worked with four other colleagues and friends to try to explain the formation of the image. After a year or so they decided that they had discovered a satisfactory “physico-chemical” process that could account for the image, and Delage presented their findings at one of the weekly Monday meetings of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, on 21 April 1902.3 Although his paper was almost entirely technical, and described vaporographic experiments using medals, bas reliefs, and plaster hands wearing suede gloves, and although he made the entirely reasonable speculation that the image on the Shroud could have been achieved by a similar process, involving “febrile sweat” and “aloe impregnated cloth,” he upset the strictly non-religious ethos of the Académie by emphasising the “extreme beauty” of the image, its “anatomical perfection,” and the realism of the bloodflows, none of which were germane to the essence of his presentation. Accompanying his presentation with the unashamedly hagiographical treatment by Paul Vignon, Le Linceul du Christ, Étude Scientifique,4 also didn’t do him any favours. The much censored précis of his paper in the published proceedings of the meeting3 prompted Delage to publish some of the omitted parts in the more liberal Revue Scientifique,5 and this set in train the succession of re-assessments and contradictory observations that have continued to the present day.
A representative paragraph from Vignon’s book will lead us neatly into the next investigator: “M. Gautier also personally assured me that viscous sweat strongly charged with urea would be given off by any fever patient in a crisis of pain. Further – and this is of great importance – a man who has been tortured for a length of time will at death be found to have his body covered with a deposit rich in urea. This deposit left after the heavy sweating, caused by acute pain, has somewhat evaporated. The skin would remain moist. If, then, after death such a corpse were covered with a sheet soaked in aloes, the urea would ferment, carbonate of ammonia would be produced, ammoniacal vapours would arise; these vapours would oxidize the aloes, and would produce on the cloth a negative by chemical action.”
Pierre Barbet
La Passion de N. S. Jésus Christ selon le Chirurgien was published in 1950,6 when Barbet was in his sixties, and regretfully no longer able to lecture in public, and acts as a compendium of a large number of previous publications based on his researches and experiments carried out in 1932 and 1935. He had been a surgeon at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Paris, and had battlefield experience in World War One. His book is unashamedly subjective, steeped in the theology of the Passion throughout, but is nevertheless a very detailed anatomical and pathological survey of the body Barbet saw represented on the Shroud, and has formed the basis for most of the subsequent medical opinion published on the Shroud ever since. Along the way, however, he completely disagreed with Paul Vignon about how the blood was transferred and how the image was formed.
“Vignon, who was completely imbued with his aloeticoammoniacal theory of vaporographic impressions (a theory which he, however, found much less satisfactory from 1938 onwards) thought that it was ammonia which had again dissolved the fibrin and had liquefied the clots. He made an experiment by placing some clots on a substance which had been soaked in a solution of ammonia. In any case it would no longer have been normal, living blood, but a coloured liquid, susceptible of flowing, incapable of recoagulating. Such flows, taking place in a horizontal position in the tomb, would have been disastrous for our blood-stained images; in fact, there is no coloured flow on the shroud; there are only counter-drawings of clots.
Vignon’s hypothesis is thus unable to account for our blood-stained images; on the contrary, it only makes for confusion. More than that, it has no basis in fact, nor has his theory of ammoniacal browning by the aloes. It is true that the fibrin will dissolve in a solution of ammonia; but I find no signs of ammonia on the shroud. […] According to Vignon’s theory, which is the oldest, the markings are due to a browning of the aloes which was spread over the linen, owing to the exhalation of ammonia by the body. These vapours would act in inverse ratio to the distance between the outlines of the body and the surface of the shroud. (The future will perhaps tell us whether there is any truth in this last phrase; I certainly do not see how it can apply to the image produced beneath the corpse; but let us pass on!) These vapours would be due to the decomposition of the urea; (formed by the sweat and blood which had accumulated or the surface of the corpse?) At this point I refuse to follow him. We have recently seen, in regard to the clots which are supposed to have been liquefied by dissolving fibrin, how this transformation of urea into carbonate of ammonia was both problematic and a slow process. Vignon’s theory, which seemed so attractive at first sight, raises yet further difficulties; its foundations especially seem to be unsound.”
Barbet did not commit himself to a particular image mechanism except to say that he was certain ammonia was not involved, and concentrated his attention towards the anatomy of the image, the position of the nails in the wrists, and the cause of death. His conclusions are neatly summarised by our next in the chain of contradiction, Fred Zugibe.
Robert Bucklin and Frederick Zugibe
In 1978, Bucklin was 62, and Acting Chief of the Forensic Medical Division in the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Medical Examiner Office, while Zugibe was 50, and Chief Medical Examiner of Rockland County, New York. Both were committed Christians, Zugibe a Catholic.
In 1997, Bucklin wrote that he had “personally examined over 25,000 bodies by autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death,”7 but his first essay on the Shroud, ‘Legal and Medical Aspects of the Trial and Death of Christ,’ was in 1970.8 In it he wrote that the body was 71 inches tall and weighed 175 pounds. Rigor mortis had set in, but was broken at the shoulders to bend the arms downwards over the groin. The nail wound in the wrist was among the carpal bones, in such a position that it “either penetrated or stimulated” the median nerve. The angles of the bloodflows from the wrist wound, about 10° apart, show that the arms were raised about 65° from the horizontal, and the cause of death was postural asphyxia. [I am hugely indebted to Teddi Pappas (see comment below) for unearthing an article Bucklin wrote on the Shroud for The Linacre Quarterly in 1958.9 It is available online. Interestingly, his medical opinion doesn’t seem to have changed in the next 40 years.] Bucklin’s conclusions concur pretty well with those of Pierre Barbet, but on the other hand, in 1995, Fred Zugibe wrote:
“Barbet’s studies are centred around three major hypotheses:
1). The man of the Shroud of Turin was nailed through an area of the wrist called Destot’s Space and not through the palm of the hand.
2). The missing thumb on the Shroud was due to injury to the median nerve by the passage of the nail.
3). The man of the Shroud died of asphyxiation.
It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that all three hypotheses of Barbet are, in fact, untenable.”10
Zugibe, who made observations and performed experiments on cadavers, as had Barbet, concluded that Barbet had made serious anatomical errors. The nail could not have passed through Destot’s space, and did not damage the median nerve. Even if it had, no median nerve damage causes the retraction of the thumb claimed by Barbet. And the cause of death was hypovolemic shock, not asphyxiation.
John Heller
Heller was a ‘medical doctor,’ but he made very few pronouncements about the anatomy of the body he thought had lain under the cloth and produced the image. He did, however, decide that the nail wound was between the radius and ulnar,11 in marked difference from both Bucklin, his fellow STuRP team member, and Fred Zugibe.
James Cameron
In England, Home Office Pathologist James “Taffy” Cameron was 48 when he contributed a chapter to Face to Face with the Turin Shroud, by Peter Jennings in 1978. 12 Four years later he was consulted by the BBC to present a virtual autopsy for the ‘QED’ programme ‘Shroud of Jesus, Fact or Fake?‘ in 1982.13 He says he concurs with Robert Bucklin, though he decided the man was 66 inches rather than 71 inches high, and that there was no indication of any metallic coin or object over the eyes, contrary to Bucklin’s observation that there was.
Alan Whanger
Paradoxically, Whanger’s evangelical zeal has probably done more to discredit authenticism in the eyes of disbelievers than many hardened medievalists. He was was the originator of the idea that multiple flowers, other plant materials and just about all the instruments of the passion can be seen on the Shroud, the originator of the idea that the Shroud is to some extent an X-ray, and the originator (with reference to the Shroud) of the phrase “points of congruence,” which have never been described or enumerated.14 Almost all his ‘discoveries’ have been both enthusiastically embraced and surreptiously suppressed in equal measure by different authenticists. In the days before image manipulation by computer, Whanger devised ingenious manipulation methods of his own by using twin projectors focussed on the same place. He found that two identical images, one the ‘negative’ of the other, slightly offset, gave an interesting pseudo three-dimensional appearance, and that any two facial images, adjusted in brightness using sheets of polaroid rotated in front of them, could be cross-faded from one to the other, giving an illusion of some congruity. This “Polarized Image Overlay Technique” has become almost as hallowed as the “VP-8 Image Analyser,” both impressively sophisticated in their time, but now superseded by software accessible to anyone with a laptop.
Michael Baden
Remarkably, the BSTS recruit Baden to their side, with the quote: “The bloodstains are too perfect to have been painted. They show the natural separation of blood serum from clotting, something an artist could not easily simulate. The path of the wounds is forensically valid.” I’ve no idea where this quote came from, and neither do they. Baden is still a practising forensic pathologist, was Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York for a couple of years, and has been called on to help investigate the murders of J.F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, O.J. Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and George Floyd, among others. In 1980 he was interviewed a couple of times on the Shroud, and was highly skeptical. He concluded that “the Shroud probably never contained a corpse, and that – even if it did – a qualified pathologist could not read the kind of conclusions being held out as ‘expert medical opinion’ on what it purportedly shows … If I had to go into a court room, I could not say there was rigor, whether the man was alive or dead, or that this picture was a true reflection of injuries on the body. I do know dead bodies: human beings don’t produce this kind of pattern.”15
Wolfgang Bonte
While any number of ‘medical doctors’ have expressed an opinion, few have been highly qualified and experienced pathologists such as those preceding this entry, among which group Wolfgang Bonte should certainly be numbered. He too had extensive experience of conducting post mortems, and was for a spell president of the International Association of Forensic Sciences. After studying the blood flows, he decided that “In my opinion, everything speaks to the fact that the blood circulation activity had not yet ended.”16
Miguel Lorente Acosta
A specialist in legal and forensic medicine, with a particular interest in violence, Lorente is another whose examination of the Shroud image has convinced him the incumbent was alive. He sees no ‘signs of death,’ such as rigor mortis or, especially, the distribution of the blood in a dead body after death, and he sees positive ‘signs of life,’ such as hypocalcaemia affecting the positions of the thumbs and fingers.17
Matteo Borrini
Borrini is Associate Professor of Forensic Anthropology at Liverpool John Moores University, and has worked on several excavations of ancient and medieval cemeteries. He famously conducted a Blood Pattern Analysis on the Shroud with Luigi Garlaschelli,18 and has decided that in his opinion the Shroud does not derive from a crucified corpse at all.
Joseph Gambescia and Gilbert Lavoie
Here we have a couple of medical practitioners rather than forensic examiners, whose studies of the Shroud have resulted in idiosyncratic conclusions not generally recognised by anyone else. Gambescia primarily focussed on the nail wounds in the feet (not the scourge marks, as the BSTS supposes), and after considerable examination and experiment, decided that the Shroud shows evidence of two nails, one pinning the right foot against the upright, and a second, through both feet, anchoring the other foot on top.19 Equally detailed observation led Barbet and Bucklin to declare a single nail pinning both feet to the upright of the cross, while Zugibe thought the feet must have been nailed individually, side by side. Since the discovery of the Jehohanan heel-bone, other ‘expert’ pathologists have seen bloodflows coming from the sides of the heels. Obviously, in spite of all these people’s autopsy experience, the Shroud marks are actually insufficiently distinctive for any decisive conclusions.
From feet to hair: Lavoie has taken the old observation that the hair looks as if it was falling from an upright head rather than one lying down and decided that the image must have been formed while the body was actually vertical, hanging in mid-air.20 He also thinks that some shadows he observes on the image indicate that it was derived from a light source shining downwards on the body from a little above and in front of it. He is completely alone in his conclusions.
José de Palacios Carvajal and José Villalaín Blanco
Authors, respectively of La Sábana Santa: Estudio de un Cirujano21 and Patografía de Jesús de Nazaret;22 both surgeons, and Blanco, a professor of forensic medicine to boot. Both considered that the anatomical reality and forensic consistency shown by the Shroud image makes it impossible that it could have been produced by an artist. Unfortunately, each of them finds a different ‘reality,’ so in spite of their confidence one, the other or both have not identified what is actually there on the Shroud.
Philippe Boxho
Arriving back where we started, Boxho is an internationally celebrated Belgian forensic pathologist with over 30,000 bodies’ experience, who has published several best-selling books, such as Les Morts ont la Parole and Entretien Avec un Cadavre. His interview with Famille Chrétienne, is in French, but part of it has been expertly dubbed into English.23 He describes the man of the Shroud as between 178 and 180cm tall, explains exactly how the crown of thorns created puncture wounds all over the scalp, apparently not noticing that most of the scalp is missing from the images, and what there is does not show a great many puncture wounds, and says that “as a result your hair must be really soaked – drenched in blood, and that’s what we see on the Shroud.” Which of course we don’t. I wonder how carefully he has examined it.
He is also in no doubt how Jesus died. “The death of Christ on the cross is what we call death by positional asphyxia. […] His oxygen level will gradually decrease because he can no longer breathe properly. […] Gradually, because of the CO2, the blood becomes acidic. This is what we call acidosis, and since this acidosis is caused by deficient breathing, in medicine we call this respiratory acidosis. That’s what he dies from.” And that seems reasonable, but does not need an examination of the Shroud to guess at. Experiments carried out by Fred Zugibe suggested that volunteers attached to crosses in appropriate postures had no difficulty breathing, in spite of great discomfort.
Alfonso Canabal
Canabal is Spanish, head of the Intensive Care Unit at the Hospital Universitario de la Princesa in Madrid, and his interview, with Radiotelevisión Diocesana de Toledo, has been very primitively translated and dubbed by a robot, but is comprehensible enough.24 He suggests at the beginning of the interview that he has recently carried out some research on the Shroud, but it’s not clear what it is. Discussion of the medical condition of the body of the images doesn’t begin for nearly half an hour, and then the first statement is that Jesus was 180-181cm tall, which is about 5cm taller than most estimates. Eventually, Canabal tells us how he thinks Jesus died. “The most accepted hypothesis,” he says, “is due to respiratory failure. It has always been said that when hanging, all the intercostal muscles are stretched and it is very difficult to breathe in. […] That is probably why he was exhausted, but it should not have been the cause of death, because he was speaking until the end. And a person who suffers terminal respiratory failure enters a comatose phase due to carbon [dioxide] retention, and could not have been speaking [the seven last words] and could not have [cried out] at the end. […] Therefore, it was not only respiratory, but it must have been haemorrhagic shock, due to all the blood lost in trauma; heart failure, which he surely had for sure, because he had pulmonary oedema, and that is clearly reflected in the Holy Sudarium. When they took him down from the cross, they first placed the Holy Sudarium to cover his face, and there he emitted fluid. […] Interviewer: Through the nose and through the mouth? Canabal: Yes. On the Holy Sudarium of Oviedo you can see blood coming from the mouth and nose, but also fluid, clear fluid, and that is the pulmonary issue. So that is heart failure, respiratory failure, acidosis due to hypotension, haemorrhage and a significant internal muscular trauma from all the blows he received.”
And so it goes. No two medical specialists can agree on the stature of the body, the position of the wounds, the angles of the blood flow, the X-ray effect, or the cause of death, and each one thinks that his is the only correct diagnosis, and that all the others, however well qualified or experienced, are therefore wrong. That is not to say that this cacophony of discordance means that none of these people knows what they are talking about – they are all, after all, ‘Medical Doctors’ with at least some advanced training in anatomy and pathology – no, what it shows is that they are all reading their own ideas into the very indistinct marks on the cloth, from which, in truth, nothing definitive about the purported man enwrapped in it can be determined. He could just as easily have been a bas relief.
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1). ‘Individual Medical Doctors’ Viewpoints on the Authenticity of the Shroud of Turin,’ Joe Marino, academia.edu, 2021, updated 2026
2). ‘Medical Opinion on the Shroud,’ British Society for the Turin Shroud, FaceBook, 19 May 2026
3). ‘Sur la Formation d’Images Négatives par l’Action de Certaines Vapeurs,’ Paul Vignon, read by Yves Delage, Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences, Vol. 34, 1902 (at gallica.bnf.fr)
4). Le Linceul du Christ, Étude Scientifique, Paul Vignon, 1902
5). ‘Le Linceul de Turin,’ Yves Delage, Revue Scientifique, Series 4, Vol 17, 1902 (at gallica.bnf.fr)
6). La Passion de N. S. Jésus Christ selon le Chirurgien, Pierre Barbet, 1950
7). ‘An Autopsy on the Man of the Shroud,’ Robert Bucklin, 1997 (at shroud.com)
8). ‘The Legal and Medical Aspects of the Trial and Death of Christ,’ Robert Bucklin, Medicine, Science and the Law, 1970 (at shroud.com)
9). ‘The Medical Aspects of the Crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ: From a Study of the Shroud of Turin,’ Robert Bucklin, The Linacre Quarterly, 1958 (at epublications.marquette.edu)
10). ‘Pierre Barbet Revisited,’ Frederick Zugibe, Sindon, 1995 (at shroud.com)
11). ‘The Probability of the Shroud Being a Forgery,’ John Heller, unpublished, 1981 (at shroud.com)
Heller actually says “between the tibia and fibula of the wrist,” which is quite a major anatomical mistake.
12). Face to Face with the Turin Shroud, Peter Jennings, 1978
13). ‘Q.E.D. Shroud of Jesus, Fact or Fake?’ BBC, 1982 (on YouTube)
14). ‘Polarized image overlay technique: a new image comparison method and its applications,’ Alan & Mary Whanger, Applied Optics, 1985
The Shroud Of Turin: An Adventure Of Discovery, Mary & Alan Whanger, 1998
15). Quoted in ‘The Shroud of Turin: Medical Examiners Disagree,’ Reginald Rhein, Medical World News, 1980
(Not online, but I am very grateful to Andrea Nicolotti, Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Turin, for sending me a scan.)
16). Quoted in Kriminalfall Golgatha: der Vatikan, das Turiner Grabtuch und der Wirkliche Jesus, Karl Herbst, 1992
Extensive translation in ‘A Living Man among the Dead,’ Helmut Felzmann, at old.world-mysteries.com
17). 42 Días: Análisis Forense de la Crucifixión y la Resurrección de Jesucristo, Miguel Lorente, 2007
18). ‘A BPA Approach to the Shroud of Turin,’ Matteo Borrini and Luigi Garlaschelli, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2018
19). ‘Joseph M. Gambescia, M.D. and the Position of the Feet on the Shroud of Turin. The History of an Investigation,’ Paul Maloney, 2014 (at shroud.com)
20). The Shroud of Jesus: And the Sign John Ingeniously Concealed, Gilbert Lavoie, 2023
21). Sabana Santa. Estudio De Un Cirujano, José Palacios Carvajal, 2009
22). Patografía de Jesús de Nazaret, José Delfín Villalaín Blanco, 2016
23). ‘Ce Médecin Légiste a Réalisé l’Autopsie du Christ à Partir du Saint-Suaire,’ Famille Chrétienne, 2024 (on YouTube)
A short extract dubbed into English was available for a while, but it seems to have been redacted.
24). ‘Focus on two 24: Alfonso Canabal, a scientific analysis of the Shroud of Turin,’ Radiotelevisión Diocesana de Toledo, 2026 (on YouTube)
Hugh, thank you for your reply.
I appreciate you taking the time to flesh out three pages’ worth of thoughts! (12 size font too!)
I went back to the NIST article to see if there was anything I might have missed.
The journal does not attribute the quote to someone else. It simply presents two “widely accepted statements.” See the direct quote here:
‘This is shown, in part, by widely accepted statements (1) concerning scientific investigations of the Shroud, and (2) following publication of the Nature article announcing radiocarbon dating results (Fig. 15; Ref. [38]). 1: “The Shroud of Turin is the single, most studied artifact in human history.” 2: “The Nature ( 14C) article has had more impact on Shroud research than any other paper ever written on the subject.”’
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/109/2/j92cur.pdf
Reading this is one of the things that really got the propeller on my beanie spinning. Whether it is “the most” studied artifact or not, it is fascinating that it has been studied so much that you can dedicate a whole blog to it, and we can still have lengthy conversations about it 50 years after STURP. If you pause to think about it, it’s kind of cool! The fact that you and I, coming from different generations, continents, and backgrounds, can delve into the profundity of the Shroud is pretty amazing.
Even if it is not “the most” studied artifact as a single physical object, the Shroud is absolutely in the top tier of studied artifacts. The 1978 STURP examination alone involved several days of in situ testing, followed by later laboratory work on samples.
For funsies:
I tried to think of what other artifacts could contend with the Shroud for “most studied” and thought of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Mona Lisa, and the Rosetta Stone. The Mona Lisa and the Rosetta Stone seem to have had far fewer direct scientific campaigns than the Shroud or the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls could perhaps be the most studied as a collection, but not as a single artifact.
Finally, there are many more ways to research the Shroud through hands-on experimentation, as your blog itself shows! You’ve done a killer job with the scholarship.
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Thank you for the list of questions. Very interesting.
I noticed that some of the numbers were missing. Could you please point me to where I can find the full list? I would love to go through it. Thank you.
In the meantime, while those questions might not have been considered directly for the STURP investigation, the STURP investigation did give insight into some of them.
Heller and Adler addressed #5, showing that the blood came first and the image of the man came second. Likewise, they addressed #9.
Here is a quote from Heller in a letter to STURP focusing on iron oxide, since that is the most common pigment brought up in relation to the Shroud:
‘McCrone does not claim that the Shroud is a forgery. He does something else which is more bizarre. He has stated that the Shroud may indeed be “authentic” but that someone has seen fit to gild the lily by over-painting it with red paint.
He has claimed at different times and occasions:
1. It probably is authentic but it is over-painted.
2. It is a forgery, painted with red paint.
3. The red paint is:
(a) Jeweler’s rouge
(b) Ocher
(c) Venetian red
(d) Tuscany red
(e) Some type Of red earth pigment
4. He has further stated that the red pigment was:
(a) Applied by finger painting
(b) Applied by brush
(c) Applied without the use of tempra
(d) App ied with the use of gelatin tempra
[…]
The major point which overwhelms all others is that the image is not red. Therefore, it has not been painted with red paint. Furthermore, […] in no case, is the amount of iron oxide which is on the Shroud adequate for visual perception. In addition, when additional iron oxide is added so that spectra can be determined, the spectral characteristics are different from those that were found on the Shroud.”
Re: #57: Shroudphotos.com has some great images available to the public.
Re: #58: The UV tests on the Shroud showed interesting characteristics, such as the serum halos. (Which we will talk about further down, hehe)
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Re: ‘just because something hasn’t been done does not mean it is impossible.’
I agree that “no one has done it yet” does not automatically prove that something is impossible. But the point is that, after decades of serious study and many attempts, no one has been able to reproduce all the Shroud’s image characteristics using a known artistic or natural process.
So the question is not merely, “Could it be possible in theory?” The real question is, “What specific process could actually produce it?” Until someone can show that, the failure to reproduce it remains very relevant.
Similarly, I also agree that blood serum is not the only organic substance that can fluoresce. But that cuts both ways. The fact that other organic fluids can fluoresce does not make blood serum less relevant, especially when the fringes appear in connection with areas already identified as bloodstains.
So the question is not simply, “Could some other organic substance fluoresce?” The better question is, “What explanation best fits the actual context of the Shroud?” Whether one argues for authenticity or forgery, the proposed substance still has to explain why those fluorescent fringes appear where they do and how they relate to the blood marks themselves.
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Hahaha, “curious question” really made me smile. I love your wit. I wish more people in my generation were as clever. 😊
I know I am already taking a lot of your time, so thank you for even reading this far. After going down some deep rabbit holes in your blog, I still can’t find a name for a possible forger. Maybe it’s just me, but if this was a forgery, I’d really like a name. In case I have missed an article where you mention one, could you please point me in the right direction?
Re: capillarity: I need to spend more time processing your studies. Stay tuned!
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Re: the 3D shape, applying similar logic from “just because something hasn’t been done does not mean it is impossible.”
If “just because something has not been done does not mean it is impossible,” then “just because researchers disagree about the body position does not mean the research is not credible.”
Disagreement does not automatically discredit a field. It can simply mean that the evidence allows for more than one interpretation, and those interpretations still need to be compared carefully. The real question is not, “Do researchers disagree?” The real question is, “Which proposed position best explains the actual features on the cloth?”
Hopefully, continued research will help clarify this more in our lifetime.
And finally, phew! x2. I remember hearing the phrase that “when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.” Pardon my French, but saying that to say this: despite an assumption being just that, an assumption, assumptions are still part of science because every investigation has to begin somewhere. I remember learning in middle school that, as part of the scientific method, sometimes you have to accept something temporarily so you can test something else.
As mentioned before, I do agree that further peer review should be conducted. That is, after all, one of the ways science works. Still, even in those humorous assessments, there is something one can learn.
Hi Aline,
How good to hear from you.
I think one of my major differences from authenticist opinion on the Shroud is about how much it has been studied. It hasn’t. It may well be the most commented on, but it has not been studied in any depth, nor with much co-ordination, and there are profound differences among the conclusions that those who have studied it have arrived at. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology “Journal of Research” does not claim that the Shroud is the world’s most studied artifact, it merely passes on the quote from elsewhere. Claiming this as some kind of imprimatur from an official government body, as some authenticists do, is a typical appeal to authority, but without substance.
In 1984, six years after the first STuRP investigation, a further proposal was put to the Turin authorities, including a number of specific questions the team were hoping to answer. They include:
hey include:
– 5) In what temporal order did the blood and body images physically appear on the Shroud?
– 6) Are [the] blood images human blood?
– 7) Are there materials present on the Shroud that can further confirm the forensic hypothesis that the cloth covered a wounded human body?
– 9) Are there artist’s materials present on the Shroud and can they be accounted for?
– 23) What is the penetration depth of the body image into the cloth?
– 46) Can the inorganic pigment hypothesis (e.g. Fe2O3) be quantitively tested by x-radiography, more sensitive that in 1978?
– 52) Where are particles (dust) found?
– 57) What do body, scorch, cloth, blood, waterstain fibrils look like at high magnifications?
– 58) What are the visible fluorescent characteristics of various areas on the Shroud (e.g. body, blood, waterstains, cloth, scorch, etc.)?
– 63) Is the Shroud body image the result of a thermal scorch?
– 75) Are there pigments in the blood regions?
These are questions which were not considered answered by the 1988 investigation. Some years later, Ray Rogers announced that the image was not due to the degraded cellulose of the Shroud fibres, but to the discolouration of a thin starch layer which covered the fibres during the manufacturing process.
In the light of this uncertainty, it is not at all surprising that no reproduction has satisfied authenticist claims. They select some conclusions by some scientists, and demand adherence to them, ignoring the fact that they really do not know what it is they are asking for.
Now to your specific inquiries. It is not a “present fact” that no artistic process is capable of reproducing the characterisitcs of the image. Just because something hasn’t been done does not mean it is impossible. We would need to know a lot more about the characteristics of the Shroud before anyone could claim that reproduction is impossible, and without that information, claiming that it is impossible is no more than an aspiration, not a fact.
David Rolfe’s million dollar incentive has been withdrawn, probably because it is becoming increasingly clear that many of the claimed special difficulties presented by the image have not only been reproduced many times, but are trivially easy to achieve. This is particularly so of the ‘negative,’ ‘3-D,’ and ‘superficial’ qualities.
The UV-fluorescent qualities of the Shroud are also much hyped, but little researched. The Shroud itself has only been observed by UV-fluorescence while attached to the very brightly fluorescent Holland cloth, whose brilliance largely obscures the particular properties of the image (which does not appear to fluoresce) or the bloodstains themselves. Under detailed scrutiny, very few of the bloodstains show the fluorescent fringes often claimed of them all, and no research has been made into what has caused those fringes. Blood serum does fluoresce, sure, but then so do most organic fluids from animal and plant sources, which may equally be responsible for those fringes.
“Curious side note: who do you think created the Shroud?” Curious question. Much of this blog is devoted to this very question. I think it was created by one of the many craftsmen employed by a large church in the Middle Ages, to provide an interesting “shroud” for use in an Easter ‘Quem Quaeritis’ ritual.
Regarding capillarity, there are two aspects which need to be considered. Firstly, does the colouration seep between the fibres of each thread, and secondly, does the colouration seep between the threads. My article looks closely at how these questions have been answered, which has mostly not been by observation or experiment. In both cases, there is a little capillarity, but not much. My experiment with the ochre paint, thickly daubed on both sides of a strip of cloth, shows that capillarity between fibres is minimal, as it hasn’t sunk in more than a few fibres. This was also observed of the bloodstains in 1973, when a “blood thread” broke apart, showing an unstained inside.
As to the whole cloth, Mark Evans’s photos show the image discolouration sinking deeply into the crevices between the threads and following the fibres along the threads, but we also know that it doesn’t seep through to the other side. Again, there shows some capillarity, but not much. My remark “there is no sign of cementation or capillarity” refers specifically to what you can see when looking at individual fibres lifted from the surface with sticky tape. They do not appear, anywhere, to be stuck together (no sign of cementation), and of course it’s impossible to judge whether the liquid has seeped anywhere by capillarity just by looking at individual fibres.
In comparing “radiation” with “liquid” hypotheses, I think it possible – but unconfirmed – that radiation might penetrate to a few fibres depth, just as a liquid does, and am not sure how one might distinguish between the two on observational grounds alone, but the signs of “runnning along the fibres and into the crevices” on Mark Evans’s photo suggest to me that in that case “liquid” is a better explanation than “radiation.”
I only mentioned sweat and oil because of Teddi’s comment. As I don’t believe the image derives from a dead body, and do not think that the Medieval craftsman used sweat or oil, it’s not an avenue I’ll be pursuing myself. In the last century, there was some, quite friendly, authenticist give and take between the physicists, who wanted to go down the “radiation” road, and the chemists, who wanted to go down the “vaporograph” road. Nowadays, and especially since the deaths of Ray Rogers and Barrie Schwortz (both “vaporograph” advocates) there seems to be zero interest in it, and everybody has nailed their colours to the radiation mast.
Anf finally (phew!) the correlation of the Shroud to a human body shape depends on the attitude of the body and the configuration of the cloth covering it. Jackson et al. went to some lengths (using a number of differently statured volunteers) to match the Shroud image precisely to a man lying completely flat, and succeeded admirably. However, almost no authenticist now think the man was lying flat, and consequently Jackson’s findings must have been spurious. There are about a dozen possible configurations, from Jackson through Piczek and Fanti to Lavoie and Rucker, and most of them have not only been tried, but each one found to be the one only possible. The truth is that the image is too vague for any precise configuration to be definitive, and a bas-relief or even a free hand sketch could produce an image just as biologically realistic. Doctors asked to conduct a ‘post mortem’ must simply assume they are looking at a real man and go from there.
Taking an image and assuming it depicts a real body has been both a serious and an entertaining side-line in several medical studies. Apart from the Mona Lisa and Venus examples I mention above, I could draw your attention to the assessment done by David A. Kass, Abraham and Virginia Weiss Professor of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, on the pathology of a patient whose heart was two sizes too small but suddenly grew to three sizes too big (the Grinch), and that of Professor Ruth Hubbard, Masonic Chair of Geriatric Medicine at the Centre for Health Services Research, who examined several cases of extreme physical stress with a view to predicting their quality of life in old age (Marvel Superheroes). Then there are the famous assessments of the pathology of Shrek, the Little Mermaid, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, etc. Although these last are deliberately humorous, what they have in common with Shroud pathologists is that they start with the assumption that the image is ‘real’ and go from there, without bothering whether it actually is or not.
Best wishes,
Hugh
Hi Hugh,
Thank you for another engaging read, and for opening up another Shroud-related rabbit hole to explore!! Given that the Shroud is the world’s most studied artifact, as noted in the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology *Journal of Research* (Volume 109, Number 2, March-April 2004), there is a great deal to learn. 🙂
[As a side note, the fact that it has been studied so thoroughly and yet there is still no consensus on how the image formed seems important to me. It does point to the difficulty of reproducing the image. Talk about experts disagreeing with each other when no one can provide a consensus on image formation!]
You said:
‘ To claim, based on the very meagre information we have about the material characterisitcs of the Shroud, that “neither an artistic nor a natural process is capable of reproducing all of the special qualities that are exhibited by the Shroud’s frontal and dorsal body images” is not a conclusion but a prophesy.’
I would push back on this a bit. It seems to me that it cannot be a prophecy if it is a present fact. As far as I understand, no one has yet been able to recreate the Shroud with all of its unique properties, even with a million-dollar incentive offered.
I would also love to understand more clearly what you mean here:
‘The fluorescing properties of the Shroud don’t seem, on the evidence we have so far, to be any different from the fluorescing properties of any other organically treated cloth’
My question is this: is the point really that fluorescence itself is unusual? It seems to me that the more interesting point is what is seen under UV fluorescence. I could look at my tennis shoes under UV light, but that would not make them comparable to the details found the Shroud. (Think the “pierced side”.) What intrigues me is the number of small details that would need to be accounted for if this were a forgery. In my humble opinion, if the Shroud is a forgery, then art historians have missed one of the most remarkable anonymous artists in history: someone capable of making an object that continues to challenge scientists, generate serious discussion, and remain unidentified. Your blog itself is evidence of how deep and persistent the conversation remains!! Curious side note: who do you think created the Shroud?
Regarding this comment:
‘and the alleged “lack of capillarity” is typical of any tightly-woven cloth as I have shown repeatedly’
I tried searching your site for where you have discussed capillarity. Thank you again for adding the search bar, by the way! What a gift! The main article I found was this one:
https://medievalshroud.com/how-was-it-done/
I may be misunderstanding you, but I found the point a little unclear. In the same article, you write:
‘there is no sign of cementation or capillarity. This is not at all surprising’
That makes it sound as though you do not think there is capillary action. But then you also write:
‘Note that the discolouration follows the fibres along the threads, which is exactly what capillary action might be expected to produce’
That makes it sound as though you do think capillary action is present. Could you help clarify what you mean?
You also wrote:
‘I dare say some interesting results could be obtained by using real sweat and oils, or even simulated sweat and oils, which might cast light on possible methods by which a dead body could produce an image, but few authenticists have wanted to explore this line of enquiry for fifty years.’
I am not sure that authenticists avoided this because they were uninterested. It may be that many felt STURP had already explored related possibilities. For example, Figure 19 in the following paper seems relevant:
Jackson, J.P., E.J. Jumper and W.R. Ercoline, “Three Dimensional Characteristic of the Shroud Image,” IEEE 1982 Proceedings of the International Conference on Cybernetics and Society, October 1982, pp. 559-575.
That said, when I am back in the UK, I would be happy to help with some experiments! Let’s go! 🙂
Finally, you wrote:
‘Almost no medical doctor has considered the mechanism by which the image might have appeared on the cloth (Gus Accetta being a brave and notable exception). Some physicists and chemists have, but pathologists have simply assumed that in looking at a photonegative of the Shroud they have been looking at a body and based their observations and conclusions on that, even though they may have known perfectly well that the Shroud is not a photograph.’
I would love for you to unpack this more. Medical doctors know what a human body looks like, and the Shroud image clearly appears to correspond to a human form. It is clearly not the image or imprint of a dog, for example. If it were, I suspect far fewer people would care about it, despite the difficulty of recreating the image. Part of the intrigue is precisely that the image appears human and mirrors the Gospel accounts. The following paper also seems to make a strong case that the image correlates with a human body shape:
Jackson, J.P., E.J. Jumper, and W.R. Ercoline, “Correlation of Image Intensity on the Turin Shroud with the 3-D Structure of a Human Body Shape,” Applied Optics, Vol. 23, No. 14, 1984, pp. 2244-2270.
I would be grateful for your clarification on these points!
Cheers!
Hi Paul,
The quote from Cameron is taken directly from the BBC video, ‘Q.E.D. Shroud of Jesus, Fact or Fake?’.
Best wishes,
Hugh
Hi Teddi,
Comment 1 (8 June: 6.04am). The trouble with “the evidence thus far…” is that the evidence isn’t very far at all. To claim, based on the very meagre information we have about the material characterisitcs of the Shroud, that “neither an artistic nor a natural process is capable of reproducing all of the special qualities that are exhibited by the Shroud’s frontal and dorsal body images” is not a conclusion but a prophesy. The fluorescing properties of the Shroud don’t seem, on the evidence we have so far, to be any different from the fluorescing properties of any other organically treated cloth, the fact that “no pigment particles can be resolved at 50X magnification in image areas” does not preclude the particles clearly visible to anyone looking at the fibres under greater magnification, and the alleged “lack of capillarity” is typical of any tightly-woven cloth as I have shown repeatedly. Your hope that “we would expect to see…” is not an observation; it is an aspiration, not justified by any experimentation. I dare say some interesting results could be obtained by using real sweat and oils, or even simulated sweat and oils, which might cast light on possible methods by which a dead body could produce an image, but few authenticists have wanted to explore this line of enquiry for fifty years. Rogers’s Maillard Reaction hypothesis has been almost entirely side-lined in favour of miraculism, which, to all authenticists’ relief, is not susceptible to scientific enquiry.
Comment 2 (8 June: 6.40am). Almost no medical doctor has considered the mechanism by which the image might have appeared on the cloth (Gus Accetta being a brave and notable exception). Some physicists and chemists have, but pathologists have simply assumed that in looking at a photonegative of the Shroud they have been looking at a body and based their observations and conclusions on that, even though they may have known perfectly well that the Shroud is not a photograph.
Best wishes,
Hugh
James Malcolm Cameron is quoted as saying “Treating the Shroud like a photograph “. Just a query here. Wasn’t it Avril Cameron who said this?
Addition/clarification: It’s 1:43 am–so I’m quite sleepy–but I just noticed that I failed to mention that I was referring to a CIRCLE with a 1-inch radius concerning the gedankenexperiment that I proposed.
Hi, again, Hugh,
You mention that: “even those who have studied it in detail have usually, in the words of James Malcolm Cameron, been ‘treating the Shroud as a photograph,’ rather than querying whether it is or not.” I think Cameron was quite wrong about this. The people who were studying the body images on the Shroud in detail (and who knew much about these body images) knew that they had photonegative qualities, but they are not true and perfect photonegatives. Additionally, the biggest questions were whether the body images were formed through an artistic process (which did not involve photography as it had not yet been invented/known to those during the medieval period) or from a natural process (which, of course, photography is definitely not.) (I’m sure you’ll want to chime in with Nicholas Allen’s photographic hypothesis but that’s been debunked and is quite far-fetched. (Why would someone go to all of that trouble when watercolor or dabbing on paint pigment could yield (to the untrained observers of the Shroud) the same (far easier) result?) This is where Occam’s razor comes in. Since the Shroud’s authenticity is supported by a body of evidence which is firmly enveloped by the context of the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead as He had said that He would, then the more likely explanation for the (thus far) irreproducible body images on the Shroud is that it was created from Resurrection Energy. That makes much more sense (given the evidence and the context which surrounds it) as opposed to some crazed artist that would go through a ridiculously complex process (that is not known to exist) in order to achieve an image that could have very simply been achieved (to the naked eye of the casual observers who it would have been made to show to) with great ease using known artistic materials.
And, aside from the body images, there’s the issue (among many others) of the bloodstains remaining red and that they are transfers of blood clots with serum halos (and the blood could not have been painted or dribbled on.)
So, those who really studied the Shroud with any degree of seriousness and in detail were looking at it in terms of either being a painting or a scorch mark from a hot statue or an imprint from a real body that does not really look like a true photographic image of a body but an imprint of a body that exhibits greater details to the naked eye when observing its actual photonegative image (with an actual camera.)
All the best,
Teddi
Hi, Hugh,
While lots of authenticists like to take an approach that throw in everything PLUS the kitchen sink, I prefer to quickly get down to “brass tacks.” The evidence, thus far, is that neither an artistic nor a natural process is capable of reproducing all of the special qualities that are exhibited by the Shroud’s frontal and dorsal body images. I think that, ultimately, the huge sticking points are as follows:
With an artistic process) to produce an image that has none of the fluorescing qualities of a scorch mark under UV light and that lacks (upon microscopic examination) paint, pigment, stain, dye (or even something like dirt) that can be found to correspond with the body images (even if only in trace amounts–if one presumes that whatever was the colorant–or initial colorant–had been washed off–at least as much as is, realistically, possible.)
With a natural process, the biggest problem is that of a lack of capillarity in the body images. If sweat or oils (such as, for example, those which might have been used for a burial ritual or even just natural oils from a body or from an ante-mortem anointing) were the cause of cellulosic yellowing, we would expect to see capillarity (at least upon microscopic examination of the cloth.)
Additionally, an interesting question is whether or not the degree of cellulosic yellowing would change by varying amounts of oil and/or sweat on the body and the degree to which the cloth is effected by it? For example, let’s do a thought experiment: we drop sweat from a dropper to create three separate 1-inch radii on the cloth. HOWEVER, one radius contains 1 drop of sweat (and let’s assume that this does not saturate the cloth), the second radius contains 2 drops of sweat (again, let’s assume that this does not saturate the cloth), and then the third radius fully saturates the cloth. If cellulosic yellowing occurs from this sweat, will there be a color difference with the yellowing that corresponds with the amount of liquid that had, initially, been on the cloth but which might have oxidized away over time–but which leaves the yellowing on the cloth?
Additionally, would the results change if the sweat is mixed with oil (and, perhaps, the ratio of oil to sweat can make a difference in the degree of the eventual cellulosic yellowing?) And, would the results change if only oil was used?
I’m going to make an educated guess that in all of these situations, the degree and quality of the yellowing will be effected by whether only sweat or only oil or a mixture of sweat and oil was used (and the ratios) as well as the degree of saturation of these liquid that either remains on the cloth or that might have evaporated or oxidized away on the cloth. I strongly suspect that unequal distributions of the amount of oil and/or sweat might yield a darker coloration whose intensity varies far more than the variation that is seen with the straw-yellow coloration of the body images on the Shroud. (That would be a fascinating experiment to do!)
Best regards,
Teddi
Gosh! That’s a great find, Teddi. I’ll amend my post, giving you lots of credit!
Best wishes,
Hugh
Hi, Hugh,
I just typed out a comment, but it seems to have vanished. So, here it is, again. I noticed that you mentioned that Dr. Robert Bucklin of STURP wrote his first essay concerning the Shroud in 1970. Actually, when I was writing my rigor mortis paper and referencing a lot of his and Dr. Frederick Zugibe’s work, I discovered that Bucklin had published a paper/essay back in 1958. That was quite a surprise to me.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol25/iss1/13/?utm_source=epublications.marquette.edu%2Flnq%2Fvol25%2Fiss1%2F13&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages
As you will see, his findings had nothing to do with trying to reinforce what the STURP team’s findings were–as his findings preceded the group’s by over two decades. So, not even the slightest potential for “group think” or anything like that.
I’ve only had a chance to do a quick and only partial scan of what you just wrote–I’ll try to find some time a bit later to read more (and, undoubtedly) comment some more on what you’ve written.
Cheers,
Teddi
Reassure me Hugh, you are not a doctor?
Cheers
Patrick