From ice cream seller to healing the sick – the life of Danny Gallagher

The Maghera man - The Seventh Son of the Seventh Son - was first interviewed by the Mid Ulster Mail many years ago.

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 Mid Ulster Mail and Danny's life underwent a metamorphosis.

"It's many moons since the Mid Ulster Mail wrote the first article about myself," he said.

"It (his career) has gone world-wide since then, including History Channel, the largest TV in the world."

He obtained an immediate following among the local people 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 until friends and relatives persuaded her to visit Gallagher at his clinic in Erdington, Birmingham.

It should be stressed however, that while successfully helping thousands to better health, Danny does not cure everyone.

His book, Danny Gallagher, Born To Heal, is now available in shops and online at http://Buythebook.ie.