When Doctors Near Business District, Greenville Witness the Impossible

The distinction between cure and healing — a distinction central to the practice of medicine — takes on special significance in Dr. Scott Kolbaba's "Physicians' Untold Stories." Cure addresses the body; healing addresses the person. A patient may be cured of disease yet remain broken in spirit, or a patient may find healing — peace, acceptance, meaning — even when cure is not possible. Kolbaba's book documents cases where cure and healing occurred together in ways that medicine alone could not explain, and where the spiritual dimension of the patient's experience appeared to contribute to both. For patients and physicians in Business District, Greenville, South Carolina, this distinction illuminates the full scope of what healthcare can and should aspire to achieve.

Dr. Scott Kolbaba

About the Author

Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD is an internist at Northwestern Medicine in Wheaton, Illinois. He interviewed more than 200 physicians about their most extraordinary experiences.

Book cover

Physicians' Untold Stories

by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD4.5 stars (1018 reviews)

Miraculous experiences doctors are hesitant to share with their patients, or ANYONE!

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Meant to awe, instruct, and inspire — stories that will convince even the harshest skeptic. — From the introduction to Physicians' Untold Stories

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Medical Fact

Bibliotherapy — prescribing books for mental health — has been shown to be as effective as face-to-face therapy for mild depression.

Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Business District, Greenville

Physicians practicing in Business District, Greenville, South Carolina work at the intersection of modern medicine and experiences that resist explanation. In conversations that rarely leave the break room or the on-call suite, doctors in and around Business District, Greenville have reported encounters with phenomena that their training never prepared them for — from patients who describe verifiable details about events that occurred while they were clinically dead, to deathbed visions shared simultaneously by multiple family members, to recoveries that defy every prognostic model available.

The medical community in Business District, Greenville includes physicians across every stage of their careers — residents navigating the exhaustion of training, mid-career practitioners balancing clinical demands with family life, and veteran physicians carrying decades of experiences that challenge the boundaries of conventional medicine. Burnout touches all of them differently, but a common thread runs through: the desire to remember why they chose medicine in the first place, and the rare but profound moments that remind them.

Physician Burnout by Specialty

Percentage reporting at least one symptom (Medscape, 2024)

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Medical Fact

A single session of moderate exercise improves executive function and working memory for up to 2 hours afterward.

Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Business District, Greenville

The Southeast's tradition of storytelling—porch stories, fish stories, hunting stories—provides a cultural infrastructure near Business District, Greenville, South Carolina for transmitting NDE accounts in ways that other regions lack. When a farmer in the barbershop tells his neighbors about his NDE during a tractor accident, the story enters the community's oral history and is retold with the same fidelity that characterizes Southern storytelling across generations.

Southern faith traditions create a cultural context near Business District, Greenville, South Carolina where NDE reports are received with far less skepticism than in other regions. When a Baptist grandmother describes meeting Jesus during a cardiac arrest, her family doesn't question her sanity—they praise God. This cultural receptivity means that Southern physicians have access to NDE accounts that patients in more secular regions might suppress.

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Medical Fact

A daily 10-minute walk outdoors provides mental health benefits comparable to 45 minutes of indoor exercise.

Physician Wellness, Grief & Finding Meaning Near Business District, Greenville

The Southeast's tradition of 'sitting up' with the sick near Business District, Greenville, South Carolina—taking turns at the bedside so the patient is never alone—creates a continuous human presence that monitors and comforts simultaneously. Modern hospitals with their monitoring equipment have replaced this human presence with technology, but the patients who heal fastest are often those whose families maintain the old practice, technology and tradition working in parallel.

Rural medicine in the Southeast near Business District, Greenville, South Carolina has always required improvisation. Country doctors who treated everything from snakebites to appendicitis with whatever they had on hand developed a pragmatic resilience that modern physicians would benefit from studying. The healing happened not because the tools were ideal, but because the physician was present, committed, and unwilling to let distance or poverty determine who deserved care.

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Did You Know?

Hospitals are among the most haunted buildings in folklore worldwide — and the physician testimonies in this book suggest there may be a reason.

Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Business District, Greenville, South Carolina

The Southeast's tradition of 'dinner on the grounds'—communal church meals near Business District, Greenville, South Carolina—has been adapted by healthcare programs that combine nutrition education with fellowship. Physicians who partner with churches to serve healthy meals after services reach patients who would never attend a hospital-based nutrition class. The church table becomes the treatment table, and the healing happens between bites of new-recipe collard greens.

The African American church near Business District, Greenville, South Carolina has been the backbone of community health for as long as Black communities have existed in the South. The pastor who leads a diabetes prevention program from the pulpit, the deaconess who organizes blood drives, the choir director who screens for hypertension during rehearsals—these are faith-based public health workers whose impact exceeds that of many funded programs.

Reader Ratings Distribution

Based on 1,018 Goodreads ratings

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Did You Know?

The white coat ceremony, now held at nearly every U.S. medical school, was first introduced at Columbia University in 1993.

Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories

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Did You Know?

Dr. Kolbaba found that physicians who acknowledged the limits of medical science were often the most respected by their patients.

Medical Heritage in South Carolina

South Carolina has a medical history stretching to the colonial era, when Charleston was one of the most important cities in British North America. The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, founded in 1824, is the oldest medical school in the Deep South and the sixth oldest in the nation. MUSC performed the first successful liver transplant in the Southeast in 1981. Roper Hospital, established in Charleston in 1850 with a bequest from Colonel Thomas Roper, is one of the oldest continuously operating community hospitals in the South. Dr. J. Marion Sims, born in Lancaster County, became known as the "father of modern gynecology" but his legacy is deeply controversial—he developed his surgical techniques by operating on enslaved women without anesthesia.

The state's Gullah Geechee communities along the Sea Islands have maintained traditional healing practices brought from West Africa, including the use of root doctors who prescribe herbal remedies and spiritual treatments. The South Carolina Lunatic Asylum (now the South Carolina Department of Mental Health's Bull Street campus) in Columbia opened in 1828 and was one of the first state psychiatric institutions in the country. During the Civil War, Charleston's hospitals, including the Confederate Roper Hospital, treated thousands of wounded soldiers, and the Citadel Square Baptist Church was converted into a military hospital.

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About the Book

Dr. Kolbaba has described the physicians he interviewed as "the bravest people I know" for sharing their stories.

Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in South Carolina

South Carolina's supernatural folklore is among the richest in the nation, deeply influenced by the Gullah Geechee culture and its African spiritual roots. The legend of the Gray Man on Pawleys Island is one of the most famous ghost stories in the American South—the apparition of a man in gray is said to appear on the beach before major hurricanes, warning residents to evacuate. Those who heed the warning reportedly find their homes spared, while those who ignore it suffer destruction. Sightings have been reported before storms in 1822, 1893, 1954, 1989 (Hurricane Hugo), and even into the 21st century.

The Boo Hag is a terrifying figure from Gullah folklore: a spirit that sheds its skin at night and sits on the chest of sleeping victims to "ride" them, stealing their breath and energy. To protect against Boo Hags, Gullah people traditionally paint their porch ceilings and door frames "haint blue"—a soft blue-green color believed to confuse spirits who cannot cross water. This tradition is visible throughout the Lowcountry. The Old Charleston Jail, which operated from 1802 to 1939, held prisoners including pirates, Civil War soldiers, and the notorious serial killer Lavinia Fisher—the first female serial killer in American history, whose ghost is said to roam the jail's upper floors.

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About the Book

Dr. Kolbaba's speaking engagements often include Q&A sessions where audience members share their own unexplained experiences.

Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in South Carolina

Fenwick Hall Plantation Hospital (Johns Island): Fenwick Hall on Johns Island was used as a hospital during various periods. The 1730 plantation house is reportedly haunted by the ghost of Ann Fenwick, who according to legend was either murdered or died of a broken heart. Her apparition has been seen near the old live oak trees, and doors in the house reportedly slam shut without explanation.

Old Marine Hospital (Charleston): The Charleston Marine Hospital, built in 1833 to treat sick and injured sailors, is a Gothic Revival structure that served as a hospital through the Civil War. During the war, it was used by both Union and Confederate forces. The building is reportedly haunted by the ghosts of soldiers who died of their wounds, with visitors reporting hearing moaning and seeing uniformed figures in the windows.

Types of Phenomena in the Book

Distribution across 26 physician accounts

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Research Finding

Hope — the belief that things can get better — has been shown to activate the brain's reward circuitry and reduce pain perception.

How This Book Can Help You

South Carolina, where the Gullah Geechee root doctor tradition exists alongside modern medicine at MUSC in Charleston, provides a cultural lens through which the experiences in Dr. Kolbaba's Physicians' Untold Stories can be understood as part of a broader human awareness of the thin boundary between the living and the dead. The state's physicians, trained in the scientific rigor of academic medicine yet serving communities where haint blue paint and root medicine are everyday realities, navigate the same tension between the explainable and the inexplicable that Dr. Kolbaba, a Mayo Clinic-trained internist at Northwestern Medicine, has confronted throughout his career.

Baptist Book Stores and Lifeway locations near Business District, Greenville, South Carolina have placed this book in the 'Inspirational' section, but it could just as easily live in 'Science' or 'Medicine.' Its genre-defying quality reflects the Southeast's own refusal to separate faith from empirical observation. In the South, the inspirational and the clinical aren't separate shelves—they're the same book.

Physicians' Untold Stories book cover — by Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD
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Research Finding

Deep breathing exercises have been shown to lower blood pressure by 10-15 mmHg in hypertensive patients within minutes.

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Discover the Stories Medicine Never Says Out Loud

Physicians' Untold Stories by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD4.5 stars from 1018 readers.

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Physicians' Untold Stories by Dr. Scott Kolbaba

Amazon Bestseller

The Stories Medicine Never Told You

Over 200 physicians interviewed. 26 true stories of ghost encounters, near-death experiences, and miraculous recoveries that will change the way you think about life, death, and what lies beyond.

By Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD — 4.5★ from 1,018 ratings on Goodreads