Jesus likely died from excessive blood loss, said Dr. Timothy Millea, an orthopedic surgeon from Bettendorf, Iowa. He is pictured giving a presentation titled “The Passion and Crucifixion: A Medical Perspective” April 4, 2019, at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Davenport, Iowa. (CNS photo/Tom Dermody, The Catholic Post)
By Tom Dermody
Catholic News Service
DAVENPORT, Iowa — Jesus likely died from excessive blood loss, a Catholic surgeon said April 4 during a talk that examined the 18 hours of Christ’s passion and crucifixion from a medical perspective.
“Christ emptied himself,” Dr. Timothy Millea told about 100 people at his home parish of St. Paul the Apostle in Davenport. “As a surgeon, two words that make our hair stand on end are ‘bleeding out,’” he said. “If you can’t stop it, you can’t keep that patient alive.”
Millea, an orthopedic surgeon with offices in Iowa and Illinois, is president of a local chapter of the Catholic Medical Association for members in those two states.
He said an adult male has about 1.5 gallons of blood and that the loss of 40 percent of that blood can lead to hypovolemic shock, a life-threatening condition. Jesus likely surpassed that threshold after repeated beatings through the night, an intense scourging at the hands of Roman soldiers that included wearing a crown of thorns and having nails driven through his upper wrists and feet.
“Some people ask, did Jesus really die of physical factors, or did he — as God — say, ‘OK, my work is done,’” said Millea. After taking his audience hour-by-hour through Jesus’ physical and emotional suffering from the Agony in the Garden to his death on the cross, Millea countered that “how he lived this long is one of the biggest divine mysteries.”
He said his interest in researching this topic began in 1986 when he read an article “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ” in the Journal of the American Medical Association. His subsequent research showed that Jesus’ medical condition has been discussed since the 16th century.
Among the latest sources he quoted was the 2014 book “A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ” by Dr. Pierre Barbet. Millea also referenced modern research on the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be Jesus’ burial cloth.
For example, he said the man whose image is seen on the shroud was 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed about 175 pounds. While tradition says Jesus was whipped 39 times in his scourging, nearly 400 wound marks are counted on the shroud and “every one of them (was) bleeding” on the day of his death.
While he promised his talk would not be “like watching Mel Gibson’s movie again” — a reference to the graphic depictions of Jesus’ sufferings in the 2004 biblical drama “The Passion of the Christ” — there came a time in his description of the crucifixion when he paused and asked his audience to “bear with me, we’re going to get through this. I don’t like this part, either, but it’s pretty important.”
He described Jesus’ passion and death as “a tragic story,” but ended with an image of the resurrected Christ on the screen.
