Every society has its explanations for the problem of suffering and disease. Although those explanatory models and the therapeutic responses that correspond to them vary greatly, there are healers in every society. In the Western world, most of the healing is done by medical doctors. Is that to say that doctors are healers? This begs the question: what are healers? This article presents the results of a research project that has been conducted at Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center, in Montreal, a high level hospital serving a multicultural population. It is based on in-depth interviews with medical doctors of different specialties. The interviews explore the concept of healing through recurrent themes in the anthropological literature on the subject, such as the themes of gift, transformation and power. The analysis shows that most doctors don’t see themselves as healers, partly because they reject what they see as the magical components of healers’ practices that are, in their view, opposed to their scientific approach. For them, the doctor’s most important task is to identify the source of the ailment, to suggest a treatment and to accompany the patient on the road to recovery, assuming a part of his anguish. Paradoxically, this is quite close to the healer’s role as it appears in various cultural contexts described in the anthropological literature.