Daniel Costa — Medicine, Religion, and History

Medicine, Religion, and History in Conversation

Neuropsychiatric and historical analysis of religious experience and sworn eyewitness testimony.

Published research
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebr.2026.100865
A meticulously arranged wooden desk in a quiet study, featuring an open, cloth-bound medical textbook displaying a detailed anatomical brain diagram beside a worn, gilt-edged seventeenth-century theology volume opened to a Latin page. A fountain pen rests across a yellow legal pad filled with neat handwritten notes. In the background, shelves of organized books fade into a soft blur. Late afternoon natural light enters from an unseen window, casting gentle, directional light and long, calm shadows across the desk surface. Shot at eye level with a shallow depth of field, photographic realism, and a clean, modern yet scholarly aesthetic that conveys thoughtful, interdisciplinary research at the intersection of medicine, religion, and history.

About Daniel Costa, MD, PhD, FRCPC

I am a psychiatrist with prior neurological training conducting interdisciplinary research in medicine, religion, and history.

Biography
I was born in 1946 in the historical province of Transylvania, Romania. After graduating from medical school, I completed specialty certification in both neurology and psychiatry and obtained my doctoral degree. Later, in Canada, I achieved certification in psychiatry as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
In 1984, I spent five months in Italy as a political refugee. After settling in Canada and marrying an Italian, I remained deeply immersed in Italian culture and history, traveling extensively throughout Italy over several decades.
In 2007, I published The Lost Gold of Rome (History Press), a historical work exploring late ancient Rome, early Christianity, the sack of Rome in 410 AD, and the legend of Alaric’s treasure.
Following my retirement from psychiatric practice in 2019, I devoted six years to the study of seventeenth-century sworn eyewitness testimonies concerning the extraordinary phenomena associated with St. Joseph of Copertino. Through neuropsychiatric and historical analysis, I identified recurrent semiological features compatible with non-convulsive epilepsy. In 2026, this research was published in Epilepsy & Behavior Reports, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to epilepsy research.

Writing

Research notes.

A meticulously arranged wooden desk in a quiet study, featuring an open, cloth-bound medical textbook displaying a detailed anatomical brain diagram beside a worn, gilt-edged seventeenth-century theology volume opened to a Latin page. A fountain pen rests across a yellow legal pad filled with neat handwritten notes. In the background, shelves of organized books fade into a soft blur. Late afternoon natural light enters from an unseen window, casting gentle, directional light and long, calm shadows across the desk surface. Shot at eye level with a shallow depth of field, photographic realism, and a clean, modern yet scholarly aesthetic that conveys thoughtful, interdisciplinary research at the intersection of medicine, religion, and history.

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