Great Martyr Panteleimon the Healer

The Great Martyr Panteleimon (before baptism, Pantoleon) was born in Nicomedia to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Eubula. He trained in the art of medicine and came to the attention of the court of Emperor Maximian Galerius, being groomed to become a court physician. The presbyter Hermolaus instructed the young man in the Christian faith; the decisive event was a miracle: Pantoleon raised a child who had died of a venomous snakebite through prayer, after which he was baptized with the name Panteleimon ("all-merciful"). From that time he treated the poor free of charge, often healing by prayer alone, and visited imprisoned Christians in jail. Jealous fellow physicians denounced him to the emperor. Panteleimon was subjected to a series of executions — burning, immersion in boiling tin, being thrown to wild beasts, the wheel, drowning — but each time remained unharmed through miraculous divine intervention; witnesses to these miracles converted to Christ in great numbers. He was finally beheaded beneath an olive tree, which, tradition holds, immediately became covered in fruit. His head is enshrined at the Russian St. Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos. He is venerated as patron of physicians and the sick.

NOTE: the template text has been replaced. Regarding the claim of being Maximian's "personal physician": sources diverge — it is more accurate to speak of proximity to the court rather than a formal court-physician appointment.