Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Notre-Dame de Lourdes

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Their Cause

There exists no natural cause capable of producing the cures witnessed at Lourdes which dispense an unbiassed mind from tracing them back to the particular agency of God. Those who refused to believe in a miraculous intervention sought at first the scientific interpretation of the occurrences in the chemical composition of the water of the Grotto. But it was then declared by an eminent chemist officially appointed to make the analysis and his statement has since been corroborated, that the water contains no curative properties of a natural character. Then the incredulous said, perhaps it operates through its temperature, or the results obtained at Lourdes may be accounted for by the bathing in cold water. However, every one knows that hydrotherapy is practised elsewhere than at Lourdes, and that it does not work the miracle of curing every kind of disease, from cancers to troubles which bring on blindness. Besides, many ailing ones are cured without ever bathing in the basins of the Grotto; this decides the question. Therefore, those who deny supernatural intervention attribute the wonderful results seen at Lourdes to two other causes. The first is suggestion. To this we answer unhesitatingly that suggestion is radically powerless to furnish the hoped-for explanation. Omitting nervous or functional diseases, since they are in the minority among those registered as cured at the Medical Office of the Grotto, and the fact we are now establishing does not require them to be taken into account, we may confine our attention to organic diseases. Can suggestion be used efficaciously in diseases of this nature? The most learned and daring of the suggestionists of the present day, Bernheim, a Jew, head of the famous school of Nancy, the more advanced rival of the Ecole de la Salpétrière, answers in the negative in twenty passages of the book in which he has recorded the result of his observations: "Hypnotisme, Suggestion, Psychotherapie" (Paris, 1903, 2nd edition). Studying this work, we find also that in the very cases where suggestion has a chance of success, as in certain functional diseases, it requires the co-operation of time, it cures slowly and progressively, while the complete cures of Lourdes are instantaneous. Therefore curative suggestion is no explanation. It is not suggestion that operates at Lourdes; the cause which cures acts differently and is infinitely more powerful.

There remains the last resource of having recourse to some unknown law and of saying, for instance, "How do we know that some natural force of which we are still ignorant does not operate the marvellous cures which are attributed directly to God?" How do we know? In the first place, if a law of this nature did exist, the pilgrims of Lourdes would not be cognizant of it any more than the rest of mankind; neither would they know any better than others how to set it in motion. Why should this law operate for them and not for others? Is it because they deny its existence and the others believe in it? Moreover, not only there does not exist, but there cannot exist, and consequently will never exist, a natural law producing instantaneously the generation of tissues affected with lesion, that is to say, the cure of an organic disease. Why so? Because any growth and consequently any restoration of the tissues of the organism is accomplished — and this is a scientific fact — by the increase and growth of the protoplasms and cells which compose every living body. Every existing protoplasm comes from some former protoplasm, and that from a previous one and so on, back to the very beginning; these generation (the fact is self-evident) are necessarily successive, that is, they require the co-operation of time. Therefore, in order that a natural force should be able to operate a sudden cure in an organic disease, the essential basis of life as it is in the present creation would have to be overthrown; nature as we know it would have to be destroyed and another created on a different plan. Therefore, the hypothesis of unknown forces of nature cannot be brought forward to explain the instantaneous cures of Lourdes. It is logically untenable. As a matter of fact, no natural cause, known or unknown, is sufficient to account for the marvellous cures witnessed at the foot of the celebrated rock where the Virgin Immaculate deigned to appear. They can only be from the intervention of God.

LASSERRE, Notre-Dame de Lourdes; BOISSARIE, L'oeuvre de Lourdes; BERTRIN, Histoire critique des événements de Lourdes, apparitions et guérisons (Paris, 1909), tr. GIBBS; IDEM, Un miracle d'aujourd'hui avec une radiographie (Paris, 1909).