Daniel Costa — Medicine, Religion, and History

Medicine, Religion, and History in Conversation

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

Selected Publications
Costa D, Chiozza S. Surprising epileptic semiology in seventeenth-century beatification testimonies: A neuropsychiatric analysis of St. Joseph of Copertino. Epilepsy & Behavior Reports. 2026;34. Read article.
A compelling and novel paper… fortunate to be able to review rich documented descriptions of these events.” — Reviewer, Epilepsy & Behavior Reports
Costa D. Psychiatric detection of exaggeration in reports of memory impairment. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 1999;187:446–448.
Costa D. Antidepressants and the treatment of stuttering. American Journal of Psychiatry. 1992;149:1281.
Costa D, Mogos I, Toma T. Efficacy and safety of mianserin in the treatment of depression in women with cancer. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. 1985;72:85–92.
Costa D, et al. Endogenous depression and imipramine levels in the blood. Psychopharmacology. 1980;7:291–294.
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.
Bernini’s colonnade of St. Peter’s Square viewed from the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica

Daniel Costa, MD, PhD, FRCPC

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

Read full biography.

Click here or the ORCID icon below to access my ORCID profile
    Standing in front of the Duomo of Siena
    Cover of The Lost Gold of Rome by Daniel Costa (History Press, 2007)
    Cropped detail from the title page of a chapter on the raptures and ecstasies of St. Joseph of Copertino in Roberto Nuti’s 1682 biography
    Books and research materials spanning neurology, psychiatry, Italian, archaeology, and religious history

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