HEALING
“A technical … term which signifies to make valid or legal. Hence one who has received a degree in an irregular manner or from i9ncompetent authority is not recognized until he has been healed. The precise mode of healing depends on circumstances. If the Lodge which conferred the degree was clandestine, the whole ceremony of initiation would have to be repeated. If the authority which conferred the degree was only irregular, and the question was merely a technical one of legal competence, it has been supposed that it was only necessary to exact an obligation of allegiance, or in other words to renew the covenant.”
Copyright, 1878, by Moss & Co and A.G. Mackey; Encyclopedia of Freemasonry by, Edward L. Hawkins and William J. Hughan