摘要
The miracle of the saints Cosmas and Damian refers to transplantation of a black leg onto a white man that took place in medieval Rome(Figure 1)(1).A sexton of a church in Rome was seriously affected by cancer in his right leg.Flung into a delirious fever,he dreamed that the holy surgeons,saint Cosmas and saint Damian,visited him and skilled as they were,decided to remove the affected leg and replace it with a healthy leg.They went to the grave of a recently deceased Ethiopian man and retrieved the right leg of this black man and took it to the sexton.The sick leg of the sexton was amputated and they transplanted onto him the leg of the black donor.Since their miracle operation,Cosmas and Damian have been elevated to patron saints of the surgical profession and many surgical societies have adopted their names in honor of them.
