Healings at Lourdes

François, Bernard et al.  “The Lourdes Medical Cures Revisited.”  Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 69(1):135–162.  Jan 2014.  A historical review of the Lourdes cures by François, a physician who was given access to the Lourdes medical archives by Bishop Perrier, with Esther Sternberg of the National Institutes of Health and Elizabeth Fee of the National Library of Medicine.  It re-examines the medical records of 411 patients cured in 1909–14 and of the 25 cures acknowledged from 1947 to 1976.  The article uses it for its verdict, its distinction between cures beyond nature and cures against it, and its record of the process's defects. ↩

1. 1a.

   Page 161:  “From the pragmatic standpoint of an agnostic, the Lourdes cures, fewer than originally thought, have been a heterogeneous collection of medical facts, neither impostures nor miracles.  Uncanny and weird, the cures are currently beyond our ken but still impressive, incredibly effective, and awaiting a scientific explanation.” ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 155:  “The Lourdes cures have been praeter naturam (beyond the natural course of nature), not contra naturam (contrary to nature, breaking a natural law).  Thus, a case of pulmonary tuberculosis initially considered incurable but which was nonetheless cured at Lourdes is praeter naturam, whereas the growth of a new limb after amputation, an impossible achievement in the human species, would be contra naturam.” ↩ ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 155:  Footnote 39, on the same page, reads:  “Lourdes spontaneous (nonsurgical) corrections of club-feet, 1896, Yvonne Aumaitre (T. Mangiapan, Les Guérisons de Lourdes, 105) and lengthening of malformed lower limbs, 1891 and 1892, Lucie and Charlotte Renauld (T. Mangiapan, Les Guérisons de Lourdes, 103) would be contra-naturam cures.  As far as we know, these cases are the only ones of their kind in the Lourdes medical history.” ↩

4. 1d.

   Page 157:  “Generally speaking, follow-up has been absent or inadequate in Lourdes history, as many patients returned to Lourdes by themselves.  There was no policy of periodical controls and no deliberate attempt to check the absence of recurrence, a basic requirement for any extraordinary and successful therapeutic method.”  Page 158:  “We know of only two postmortems carried out on subjects formerly cured in Lourdes.” ↩

5. 1e.

   Page 154:  “In our last series of twenty-five cured patients, six were terminally ill and so contravened one of the Lambertini's canons.  Eight subjects were cured in a matter of days and months, or even years—a sharp departure from the requirement of instantaneity.  After years of debate, Lambertini's canons seem to have been rescinded in 2006–8, when it was obvious they no longer applied to what was actually observed.” ↩ ↩

6. 1f.

   Page 157:  “Considering the lengthy observation periods, it may be claimed that four cases of tuberculosis were actually cured.  This series provides three examples of multiple sclerosis with remissions of at least forty-year duration, synonymous with cure; the speed with which the cures occurred is impressive and without known equivalent.  Two of the most recent cases (No. 23, 25) are related to osteosarcoma and this diagnosis seems beyond dispute.  The first of these two cases (MIC, No. 23) epitomizes a Lourdes cure.” ↩ ↩

7. 1g.

   Page 159:  “Spontaneous remissions of diseases, especially of cancers, do not measure up to the speed, power, and variety of the Lourdes cures.” ↩ ↩

8. 1h.

   Page 158:  Footnote 47, item (h), reads:  “No. 25, Ewing's sarcoma (credit of the cure given to Lourdes, overlooking the fact that the disease worsened during the four months following the pilgrimage, before the first signs of improvement appeared spontaneously in Sicily).” ↩

9. 1i.

   Table 4, page 152:  The footnote to the table says:  “Two subjects were omitted: MUR, 1962, for lack of information; BEL, 1967, since the key requirement of approval by a two-third majority of the International Committee was not met.”  Footnote 47, on page 158, names the pair as "MURA, cured in 1962; BELY, cured in 1987", so the 1967 is a typographical error. ↩

10. 1j.

    Page 154:  “Sixty-seven Lourdes cures … seven in 1862, thirty-three in 1907–13, twenty-two in 1946–65, and five in 1976–2005”. ↩

11. 1k.

    Page 146:  “The cure was said to be instantaneous in 59 percent of 382 pilgrims for whom we had adequate data.”  Page 161:  “the occurrence of cures that were not instantaneous but rather required days or weeks.  This mode of cure occurred in about one-third of patients cured in 1909–14 and 1947–76.  Largely unnoticed and overlooked, this pattern does not square with the usual script of a miracle, nor does it fit with the desiderata of the Church.” ↩

12. 1l.

    Page 157:  “Thirteen patients out of twenty-five (Tables 3 and 4) died nineteen to fifty-seven years after the cure and without relapse of the disease.  For nine subjects living in 2008, the time elapsed since the cure was ten to fifty-four years.” ↩

13. 1m.

    Page 156:  Quoting Carrel's letter to La Croix, 1909:  “he has written these books as if he were a priest and not a physician, and pious considerations were a substitute for observations: no rigorous analysis, no precise deduction.  These books have been best-sellers but have remained restricted to the faithful and have certainly no scientific value.” ↩

Myers, A. T., and F. W. H. Myers.  “Mind-Cure, Faith-Cure, and the Miracles of Lourdes.”  Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 9:160–209.  1893.  A preliminary paper by two writers for the Society for Psychical Research: A. T. Myers, a physician, and F. W. H. Myers.  The authors call it "avowedly of an imperfect and provisional kind", and they had not studied the cures on the spot.  The article uses it for the authors' point that a fair test of Lourdes would need a comparison group. ↩

1. 2a.

   Page 204:  “For a fair comparison it would be needful to take some other group of patients, bearing a known proportion to the Lourdes patients, and to compare the proportion of alleged cures in each group, — a test at present impossible to apply.” ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 199:  “Phthisis may be a disease which our art cannot cure, but it is by no means a disease which cannot cure itself.”  “A post-mortem examination is often the only way of discovering whether there really has been phthisis or no.  Thus the best judges are often left in doubt;  and the mistakes of the less experienced are innumerable.” ↩

Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes.  Miraculous healings.  n.d.  Retrieved Sep 14, 2026.  “Of the more than 7,000 cases of healing reported at Lourdes since the apparitions, 72 have so far been recognised as miraculous by the Church.  More than 80% of the cures recognised as miraculous have been women. ... The countries of origin of the people whose healing has been recognised as miraculous are France (56), Italy (9), Belgium (3), Germany (1), Austria (1) Switzerland (1) and England (1).  Six people claim to have been healed through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes, even though they had not come to Lourdes.”  The shrine's pilgrim site (.com) gives a list of the 72 cures it has recognized as miraculous, with each person's name, home town and recognition date.  Its summary paragraph gives the total of more than 7,000 reported cases of healing, the share of women, the countries of origin, and the six people who claim healing away from Lourdes.  The article uses the list for the count of recognized cures and the facts in that summary. ↩ ↩ ↩

Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes.  Antonietta Raco, 72nd Lourdes miracle.  2025.  “On 15 November 2024, the bishop of the diocese of Tarbes and Lourdes informed the bishop of the diocese of Tursi-Lagonegro, the diocese where Antonia Raco resides, who then proclaimed the miracle on Wednesday 16 April 2025.”  A news page on the shrine's website about the 72nd recognized cure, of Antonia Raco, who had primary lateral sclerosis, a progressive nerve disease, and was cured on a pilgrimage in 2009.  It gives the file's chronology and records that in November 2024 the majority of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL) voted that she was cured in an unexpected, complete, lasting and unexplained manner.  The article uses it for the 16 April 2025 proclamation date, which this page gives and the list of healings does not. ↩ ↩

Dowling, St John.  “Lourdes cures and their medical assessment.”  Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 77(8):634–638.  Aug 1984.  A 1984 paper by a general practitioner who was a member of the Lourdes medical committee, describing how that committee judges claimed cures.  Dowling thanks Mangiapan "for giving me access to the minutes of all the meetings of the CMIL" (p. 638), and the paper sets out the committee's 18 headings, its strict rule on cytotoxic drugs, and its counts, including 19 cures declared medically inexplicable out of 38 dossiers sent to it.  The article uses it as the committee's own account of how strict its filter is, and the PubMed ID is 6384509. ↩

1. 5a.

   Pages 635–636:  “cases ruled out here are those about which there cannot be any certainty that the treatment has not been effective — e.g. a course of cytotoxic drugs would lead to the case being rejected, even where the likelihood of success was small.” ↩ ↩

2. 5b.

   Page 637:  “Since the CMIL became the second-stage arbiter of cure in 1954, 38 dossiers have been submitted to it by the Medical Bureau.  Ten of these were rejected after preliminary examination and 28 were subjected to full study: 3 of these have lapsed without a formal decision having been reached, 6 were rejected, and 19 were accepted as cures that were medically and scientifically inexplicable.”  “Of the 19 accepted as cures, 13 have been recognized as miraculous by the Church (Table 1), 5 have been rejected by Canonical Commissions”.  Also, for 1947 to 1977:  “the claims to cure of 1300 people have been deemed to merit the opening of a dossier at the Medical Bureau and, after the follow up described above, 55 were sent forward to the second stage of investigation where 27 were accepted as medically inexplicable.” ↩ ↩

3. 5c.

   Page 635:  “At present there are 25 members of CMIL — 13 French, 2 Italian, 2 Belgian, 2 English, 2 Irish and one each from Spain, Holland, Scotland and Germany. ... Ten members hold chairs in their medical schools.  All are practising Catholics.” ↩ ↩

4. 5d.

   Page 635:  “The report is then discussed critically at length under 18 headings, a vote being taken at each stage.” ↩

5. 5e.

   Page 636:  “A simple majority carries the case one way or the other.” ↩

6. 5f.

   Page 636:  “The declaration by the CMIL that it considers the cure to be medically inexplicable does not make it a miracle because that is a matter for the Church, not doctors.” ↩

7. 5g.

   Page 634:  The paper's rule (4) reads:  “The cure must be sudden and reached instantaneously.  (This is now extended to include cures developing over a period of days.)” ↩

8. 5h.

   Page 637:  “the other died of late complications of her original illness 9 years after the CMIL had passed her as a cure.  Reviewing the latter after her death, the Committee concluded that when they reached their decision they were insufficiently aware of the natural history of Budd-Chiari syndrome and the possibility of natural remission.”  Table 1, on the same page, lists Ginette Nouvel, cured 23 September 1954, passed by the CMIL 1961, recognised 1963, died 1970. ↩

9. 5i.

   Page 636:  “Spontaneous remission of neuroblastoma has been reported, but very rarely and never after the age of 5 years.  Spontaneous remission of Ewing's tumour has not been recorded.”  The Cirolli case runs over pages 636 and 637. ↩

10. 5j.

    Page 636:  “The histological opinion of Professor Cordaro of Catania was a metastasis from a neuroblastoma.  He sent the biopsy slides to the Medical Bureau and they were submitted to French histologists eminent in the field of bone tumours.  Professor Payan of Marseilles considered that a metastasis from an undifferentiated neuroblastoma was a possibility, but gave his opinion that it was a Ewing's tumour.  Professor Nezelof of Paris agreed that the diagnosis of a metastasis from a neuroblastoma could not be absolutely excluded, but concluded that Ewing's tumour was the most likely diagnosis.  Dr Mazabraud and his colleagues at the Curie Institute reached the same conclusion.” ↩

11. 5k.

    Page 636:  “Her knee swelling disappeared, leaving her with a degree of genu valgum … X-rays showed repair of the bone.”  The same case:  “There was no improvement and X-rays in September showed extension of the growth.” ↩

12. 5l.

    Page 638:  “Others, notably West (1957) in '11 Lourdes Miracles', have questioned the scientific standards of the examination of cures: only 2 of his cases were considered by the CMIL.  In this connection it is necessary to say that the acceptance or otherwise of a cure as inexplicable must be seen in the context of its time and of medical knowledge and practice at the time of scrutiny.” ↩

13. 5m.

    Page 637:  “At the present time more than 4 million pilgrims visit the shrine every year and about 65 000 of them are registered and documented as sick. ... The Medical Bureau estimates that over 2 million sick pilgrims have come to Lourdes since 1858 and about 6000 persons claiming to be cured have been examined by the doctors there: a total of 64 have been recognized as miraculous cures by the Catholic Church.” ↩

Kruijthoff, Dirk J. et al.  “Can you be cured if the doctor disagrees? A case study of 27 prayer healing reports evaluated by a medical assessment team in the Netherlands.”  Explore 19(3):376–382.  2023.  An original research article in the journal Explore, a case study of 27 Dutch prayer-healing reports chosen from 83 received, each assessed by an independent team of five medical consultants.  The team classed 11 healings as medically remarkable and none as medically unexplained, and the authors report that positive effects had lasted 5 to 33 years, with 2 relapses.  The article uses it as a Dutch test of the Lourdes medical filter, and quotes the team's own explanation for finding no unexplained case: its series is small. ↩

1. 6a.

   Abstract:  “Eleven of the 27 healings assessed were evaluated as 'medically remarkable', none were labelled as 'medically unexplained'.”  Page 378:  “At the medical desk in Lourdes less than 1% of reports received were evaluated as being unexplained.  It is therefore understandable not to find such cases in our small series.” ↩ ↩

Bertrin, Georges.  Lourdes: A History of Its Apparitions and Cures.  London: Kegan Paul.  Translated by Mrs Philip Gibbs.  1908.  A history of the shrine's apparitions and cures by Georges Bertrin, a professor at the Paris Catholic Institute, translated into English from the eighth French edition.  Its preface treats the cures at Lourdes as continuing miracles, and it reports a register of 3,353 cases, of which 265 were nervous.  The article uses it for Bertrin's concession that minor nervous cures "cannot be taken as proofs of the existence of the supernatural", and for his register of 3,353. ↩

1. 7a.

   Page 92:  “All the nervous cures, counting even the gravest, put together, do not amount to one-twelfth part of the cures obtained.  But we know from statistics that out of 3353 cases only 265 were nervous.”  “We must especially notice 48 blind who received their sight, and 31 deaf and dumb who recovered the faculties of speech and hearing.” ↩ ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 92:  “As to nervous troubles of a less important nature, which a lively emotion is perhaps sufficient to dispel, it may be that, when they disappear at Lourdes, the result is due to natural causes, it may also be due to higher causes.  On that point we are ignorant, and therefore such doubtful cases cannot be taken as proofs of the existence of the supernatural.” ↩

3. 7c.

   Page 242:  Quoting the Annales de N.-D. de Lourdes, vol. 26, p. 114, on the 1893 re-examination of Marie Lebranchu:  “At the examination, made at the Medical Office with the greatest care, no trace could be found of the serious disease from which she had suffered.  Since then the cure has been permanent, in spite of an attack of influenza from which the patient suffered during the winter.” ↩

Iuliano, Gerardo.  “Unexpected healings in Lourdes catholic sanctuary: an epidemiological review on the cases canonically acknowledged.”  Clinical Case Reports and Reviews 4.  2019.  A 2019 review by a former head of a multiple sclerosis centre in Salerno.  It takes the 70 cures then acknowledged by the Church, mostly of pilgrims, records their diagnoses, places and dates, and tests them with ANOVA, frequency tables and regression, finding fewer healings over time but no definite end.  The author says the cures had never been statistically appraised before, which makes this the only statistical treatment of the series; the article uses it for the disease breakdown, the healings far from Lourdes and the trend, but not for exact totals, because the author's own totals do not always reconcile. ↩

1. 8a.

   Section B – Clinic:  “Main diseases diagnosed are (tab.2a):  tuberculosis (N=28);  infectious and inflammatory diseases (24), cancer (6), trauma and postraumatic diseases (4), rheumatic disease (3), generalized diseases as underdevelopement or cachexia (3), necrosis (2).” ↩ ↩

2. 8b.

   Section C – Geographical data:  “Nine healings took place far from Lourdes, eight using water, one even without.” ↩

3. 8c.

   Section D – Historical data:  “It is notable that the peaks are coincident with fiftieth anniversary and centenary of the apparitions.”  “ANOVA (p=0.006) shows significant peaks (p<0.05) under dr Boissarie (mean 1/year) and Leuret (mean 1.6/year).” ↩

Tiemersma, Edine W. et al.  “Natural History of Tuberculosis: Duration and Fatality of Untreated Pulmonary Tuberculosis in HIV Negative Patients: A Systematic Review.”  PLoS ONE 6(4):e17601.  Apr 2011.  A systematic review of studies made before drug treatment for tuberculosis existed, pooled to estimate how long untreated lung tuberculosis lasts and how often it kills, in HIV-negative adults.  It estimated that about 70% of patients with bacteria visible on a sputum smear died within ten years, and that about 20% of patients whose bacteria grew only in culture did, though the 20% is an indirect estimate.  The authors admit that many of the old studies do not meet modern standards, and the article uses the review for how many untreated patients recovered on their own. ↩

1. 9a.

   Page 1:  “Untreated smear-positive tuberculosis among HIV negative individuals has a 10-year case fatality variously reported between 53% and 86%, with a weighted mean of 70%.  Ten-year case fatality of culture-positive smear-negative tuberculosis was nowhere reported directly but can be indirectly estimated to be approximately 20%.  The duration of tuberculosis from onset to cure or death is approximately 3 years and appears to be similar for smear-positive and smear-negative tuberculosis.”  The conclusions say:  “Current models of untreated tuberculosis that assume a total duration of 2 years until self-cure or death underestimate the duration of disease by about one year, but their case fatality estimates of 70% for smear-positive and 20% for culture-positive smear-negative tuberculosis appear to be satisfactory.”  Tiemersma frames the non-fatal outcome as self-cure, which is why survival is read here as recovery. ↩ ↩

2. 9b.

   Page 10:  “Another limitation is our serious lack of knowledge on the prognosis of extra-pulmonary and smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis”. ↩

Hemler, Steve, and Lee Granger.  “Lourdes and the miraculous cures.”  Arlington Catholic Herald.  2025.  “Since 1858, more than 7,000 cures at Lourdes have been reported, more than 2,500 of which have been reviewed by medical personnel and deemed 'medically inexplicable.'”  A newspaper article by two officers of the Catholic Apologetics Institute of North America, who give no citation for their figure.  The article quotes it as the apologetic claim of more than 2,500 medically inexplicable cures, a figure it tests and rejects. ↩ ↩

Theillier, Patrick.  “Authentication of a Cure at Lourdes.”  Lourdes Magazine.  Feb 9, 1999.  “After additional examinations and consultations, on November 14, 1998, following a majority vote of the members of CMIL, the following statement was issued.  'It is possible to conclude, with a good margin of probability, that Mr. Bely suffered an organic infection of the multiple sclerosis type in a severe and advanced stage of which the sudden cure during a pilgrimage to Lourdes corresponds with an unusual and inexplicable fact to all the knowledge of science.'”  The International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL) verdict on Jean-Pierre Bély's cure from multiple sclerosis, written up in Lourdes on 9 February 1999.  The statement says the committee reached it by majority vote, and the Bureau's doctor-in-charge wrote it up.  The article uses it because the committee's own wording hedges the diagnosis while it calls the cure inexplicable. ↩ ↩

May, Peter.  “'Miracles Today?' A Medical Critique of Craig Keener's miracle claims.”  The Skeptic.  Jul 2022.  A medical critique, in the sceptical magazine The Skeptic, of the miracle claims made by Craig Keener, a Pentecostal theologian.  May, a British physician and a Christian, interviewed Mangiapan in September 1995 and arranged the Cirolli re-reading.  The article uses it for May's account of the Micheli case and the Cirolli slides, and May's 2017 article gives a different Micheli account. ↩

1. 12a.

   “Lourdes miracle no. 63:  In 1962, Vittorio Micheli gradually recovered from a cancer of his hip.  It took 2 years, but he then needed reconstruction surgery to raise the head of his femur”.  Unsourced in May's text. ↩

2. 12b.

   “In 1976, 12 yr. old Delizia Cirolli was diagnosed as having a cancer in her knee.  Over the next year, she gradually recovered.  The type of cancer was disputed, so I urged a TV film producer to obtain a second opinion.  A histological review at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London in 1998 concluded that there was probably no cancer at all, but a bone infection, probably tuberculosis, which resolved without treatment over the following year.” ↩ ↩

Lambertini, Prospero.  De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione.  Volume 4.  Prato.  1738 (edition of 1841).  Section Liber IV, Pars I, Caput VIII, §2, page 88.  The author is Pope Benedict XIV.  This is volume four of his collected works, which fill seventeen volumes in Latin; the treatise was written from 1734 to 1738 and covers how the Church examines a claimed miracle when it judges a candidate for sainthood.  The article cites it for Lambertini's Latin list of criteria and sets the shrine's modern list against it. ↩ ↩

1. 13a.

   The edition reads:  “quartum, ut sanatio sit subita et momentanea”.  “ultimum, ut sublatus morbus non redeat.”  François, Sternberg and Fee 2014, p. 153, give:  “quod sanatio sit subita et instantanea”.  “ut recidiva, sublato morbo, non contigat”.  which match neither the 1841 text nor the AMIL transcription. ↩

Gasquet, Francis Aidan.  “The Catholic Church and the Lourdes Cures.”  British Medical Journal 2(2590):465–467.  Aug 20, 1910.  A reply to the British Medical Journal's own series on faith healing and the Lourdes miracles, written by the Abbot President of the English Benedictines to put the Catholic Church's case.  It sets out the tests the Church applies to a claimed miracle, following Pope Benedict XIV, and argues that the process is careful and based on evidence.  The article uses it for the Church's own case: its concession that most Lourdes cures are due to mind over body, its account of the Gargam case, and its claim about Charcot. ↩

1. 14a.

   Page 466:  “In the majority of cases cured at Lourdes it is admitted that the relief from suffering or the restoration of health is due to the influence of mind over body, or as we prefer to call it, to the religious influences of the place.” ↩ ↩

2. 14b.

   Page 466:  “In all his experience at Salpêtrière, Professor Charcot, when he looked for cures to parallel those recorded at Lourdes, had to confess that he could find none in his vast clinic.”  No citation given, and contradicted by Charcot 1893, p. 30. ↩

3. 14c.

   Page 466:  Medical report of 19 December 1900:  “a permanent infirmity, hardly susceptible of improvement, and more likely to terminate fatally”.  Civil court, 20 February 1901, on the company's offer:  “ridiculous in view of the lamentable condition of the patient”.  The company's agent advised 12,000 francs a year instead of the lump sum, since.  “Gargam was certain to die soon”.  “The civil courts thus recognized the fact that Gargam was a hopeless invalid for life.” ↩ ↩

Garner, Jim.  “Spontaneous regressions: scientific documentation as a basis for the declaration of miracles.”  Canadian Medical Association Journal 111(11):1254–1264.  Dec 7, 1974.  The CMAJ's associate editor for its Affairs of Organized Medicine, a journalist and not a physician, who describes himself as an agnostic.  It rests on his own observation at Lourdes, on interviews with Dr. Mangiapan, director of the Medical Bureau, and with the archivist of the Congregation of the Cause in Rome, and on books and documents; the Bureau refused him unrestricted access to its records.  The article uses it for the John Traynor pension case and for the bath-water evidence. ↩

1. 15a.

   Page 1255:  “According to the Medical Bureau, the Ministry of Pensions absolutely refused to believe he could have been cured and insisted on continuing his 100% disability pension.”  “In Traynor's case it never did [make the theological decision].  Why?  The reason has not been revealed.” ↩ ↩

2. 15b.

   Page 1262:  “Boissarie gave Zola a string of names of attendants but Zola determinedly followed them up and established none of them had actually seen the foot before the cure.  Nevertheless, the Church accepted the 2-month-old medical certificate and the Trouvé cure is listed as miracle number 15.” ↩

3. 15c.

   Page 1262, sidebar:  “The spring water in the baths is changed only once a day, and by the end of the bathing, scores of people suffering virtually every imaginable complaint have bathed and presumably left organisms in it.  And then the attendants jump in, immerse themselves and drink a glassful.  There is no recorded case of harm from this.”  “The water has frequently been analysed; no content of any therapeutic value has ever been found.” ↩

Gendron, Mathilde.  “On ne parle jamais de miracle: médecin au sanctuaire de Lourdes, il raconte.”  Egora / Le Quotidien du Médecin.  Aug 16, 2024.  An interview, in French, with Alessandro de Franciscis, the permanent doctor at Lourdes and president of the Medical Bureau.  He explains how the Bureau and the committee vote on a cure, and says the doctors will never speak of a miracle, only of an unexplained cure.  The article uses it as a doctor's own account of the vote and of the Moriau case. ↩

1. 16a.

   At the Bureau the assembled doctors vote, and the interview gives the words:  “votent à main levée s'ils considèrent que cette guérison est inexpliquée.  Si leur réponse est à l'unanimité positive,”.  the case goes to the CMIL, where:  “ces médecins votent également, mais cette fois-ci à bulletin secret.  Pour que la guérison soit véritablement jugée 'inexpliquée' par les médecins, il faut qu'au minimum 'deux tiers des voix' penchent en cette faveur.” ↩

2. 16b.

   “si les médecins ne parleront jamais de 'miracle' mais uniquement de 'guérison inexpliquée', l'Église, quant à elle, s'adonne à ce terme”. ↩

3. 16c.

   “Fin novembre, 26 membres de la Cmil votent en faveur de la guérison inexpliquée pour Bernadette Moriau sur les 27 présents”.  And, of Moriau:  “prenait aussi de fortes doses de morphine, jusqu'à 300 mg de skenan par jour.  Le soir de sa guérison, elle n'avait rien pris et elle n'a eu aucun syndrome de sevrage”. ↩ ↩ ↩

Harris, Ruth.  Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age.  Allen Lane, London.  1999.  A book-length study of Lourdes by a historian of modern France at New College, Oxford.  The article uses it for Charcot's hysteria thesis, Zola's changes to the cures in his novel, the drop in recorded cures after 1883, and the 1890s doctors' view of Lourdes as a health hazard. ↩

1. 17a.

   Page 350:  “while Boissarie attacked the idea that Lourdes operated purely through the effects of suggestion on hysterics by pointing to cures of 'organic' illness, Charcot concluded that such conditions could be hysterical in origin, the proof being that Lourdes had an effect on them.  ... Rather than reconsidering his idea of hysteria, however, he merely extended it.” ↩ ↩

2. 17b.

   Page 336:  “As has been said, however, Marie Lebranchu did not relapse, and Catholics never forgave him for the deceit.”  “Zola thus made his central figure an hysteric, turned Lebranchu's cure into a relapse, and undermined the Trouvé case by claiming shoddy clinical procedure.” ↩ ↩

3. 17c.

   Page 326:  “While 143 cures were recorded in 1883, the number dropped to 83 the following year, a diminution perhaps attributable to the greater medical presence.” ↩

4. 17d.

   Page 348:  “Lourdes was seen as 'a Mecca for cholera', the train journey a bouillon for breeding tuberculosis. ... 'If I wished you harm, I would advise you to take a bath in this foul, stagnant water.'  Physicians suggested that Lourdes be disinfected by fire.” ↩

Jaki, Stanley L.  “Two Lourdes Miracles and a Nobel Laureate: What Really Happened?”  The Linacre Quarterly 66(1).  Feb 1999.  A lecture by Rev. Stanley L. Jaki, a priest and 1987 Templeton Prize winner, printed in the journal of the Catholic Medical Association; he also wrote the introduction to the 1994 edition of Carrel's The Voyage to Lourdes.  It corrects a Scientific American account of Marie Bailly's cure point by point, from the Bureau's Dossier 54, and reports the 1964 decision against the cure.  The article uses it for that decision, which Jaki disagrees with. ↩

1. 18a.

   “The other, the Marie Bailly case, was repeatedly discussed at various levels by the Medical Bureau in Lourdes and finally in Paris at its highest or International Committee.  The year was 1964.  A decision was made against the miraculous nature of the cure.”  “it seems that because those earlier doctors had not considered the possibility of pseudosciosis [pseudocyesis, false pregnancy], the International Committee decided against recommending Marie Bailly's cure for ecclesiastical approval.” ↩ ↩

Randi, James.  The Faith Healers.  Pages 20–23.  Buffalo: Prometheus.  1989.  A book about faith healers, of which pages 20–23 cover Lourdes.  The article uses it because its author, no friend of the place, concedes a point about the spring water. ↩

1. 19a.

   Page 21:  “The Church has never made any claim that the spring water from the Lourdes grotto is curative in any way.” ↩

2. 19b.

   Page 23:  “it has been taken to be a disguised account of his own 1902 visit to that shrine, though there is no reason to believe it is such an account.”  Randi's bibliography, p. 311, cites the 1950 Harper edition, whose editorial note at p. 47 reads "Marie Ferrand's real name was Marie Bailly." ↩

Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes.  Dossier de presse 2020.  2020.  A press kit of 31 pages, in French, issued by the shrine in 2020.  It gives 70 cures as of 2020 and sets out the shrine's own rules for checking a claimed cure.  The article uses it for the shrine's current list of seven criteria, the founding of its medical bureau, the four stages of its process, and its count of sick pilgrims a year. ↩

1. 20a.

   Page 28:  “Troisièmement, il faut que cette maladie soit organique, lésionnelle, c'est-à-dire qu'il y ait des critères objectifs, biologiques, radiologiques, tout ce qui existe actuellement en médecine ; ce qui veut dire qu'aujourd'hui encore on ne reconnaîtra pas des guérisons de pathologies sans critère objectif précis comme les maladies psychiques, psychiatriques, fonctionnelles, nerveuses, etc.”  “Le 5ème critère concerne le moment de la guérison lui-même : la guérison doit être subite, soudaine, instantanée, immédiate et sans convalescence.” ↩

2. 20b.

   Page 26:  “pour que personne ne reparte de Lourdes en se disant « guéri » sans avoir soumis son histoire de guérison à une vérification médicale rigoureuse et collégiale.” ↩

3. 20c.

   Page 27:  “S'il juge le cas sérieux et digne d'être approfondi, il convoque ses confrères médecins et soignants présents à Lourdes ce jour-là et qui ont signalé leur présence sur le registre du bureau des constatations médicales de Lourdes.”  “les membres du Comité Médical International de Lourdes (CMIL) votent le fait que la guérison est « inexpliquée dans l'état actuel de nos connaissances ».” ↩

4. 20d.

   Page 2:  The infographic.  Under the heading "CHAQUE ANNÉE":  “45 000 personnes malades ou handicapées en pèlerinage”.  In the cumulative block beside it, with the "70 miraculés":  “7300 cas de guérison enregistrés”.  Page 4:  On visitor numbers:  “Le Sanctuaire ne dispose d'aucun moyen de comptage pour établir leur nombre.”  The two blocks are laid out side by side; 7,300 is a total since 1858, not an annual figure, as the adjacent "70 miraculés" shows. ↩

Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes.  The Medical Bureau of the Sanctuary.  2025.  Retrieved Sep 14, 2026.  The shrine's own web page on its Medical Bureau, so it gives the shrine's account of the Bureau's history and of the CMIL.  The article uses it for the Bureau's founding in 1883, Pope Leo XIII's approval of its procedures in 1886, its openness to non-Catholic doctors from 1925, and the make-up of the CMIL. ↩

1. 21a.

   “Dr Georges-Fernand Dunot de Saint-Maclou established the Bureau des Constatations Médicales in 1883, so that no one, who thought he had been 'cured', would leave Lourdes without having submitted the story of his cure to a rigorous and collegiate medical assessment.”  “The letter by the Archbishop of Cagliari, Mgr Vincenzo Gregorio Berchialla, dated 3 September 1886 and forwarded from Rome to Dr Dunot de Saint-Maclou, relates the assent of Pope Leo XIII to the Bureau's rigorous procedures.” ↩

2. 21b.

   “all doctors and healthcare workers present in Lourdes at that time can attend the meeting, regardless of their religious belief.”  Quoting the Journal de la Grotte of 6 September 1925, the Bureau.  “will remain open to all doctors wishing to participate, whether Catholic or not”. ↩

3. 21c.

   “The International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL) has about thirty members.  At the moment, it is jointly presided by the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, Mgr Nicolas Brouwet, and by one of its members, Prof Olivier Jonquet, appointed by the Bishop for a renewable mandate.” ↩

de Sury, Caroline.  “'Miracle Doctor' of Lourdes retires after 17 years, insisting miracles aren't his job.”  OSV News.  Feb 2026.  “We conduct in-depth investigations into about 30 of the 100 cases we receive on average each year.”  A February 2026 news report on the retirement of the doctor de Franciscis, who worked at Lourdes for 17 years and says that declaring miracles is not his job.  The report gives Lambertini's forename as Lorenzo; it was Prospero.  The article cites it for the Sanctuary's communications director saying in 2026 that bishops take the person's testimony into account. ↩

1. 22a.

   David Torchala, the Sanctuary's director of communications:  “there are cases of cures that are recognized as medically unexplained, which the bishops do not declare to be miracles.  In addition to the findings of medical research, they take into account the personal testimony of the person involved, who will then be sent out on a mission to share their story.” ↩

“Guérisons de Lourdes.”  French Wikipedia.  n.d.  Retrieved Sep 14, 2026.  A French Wikipedia article listing the recognized cures, with diagnoses, ages and dates of cure.  It was derived from the Sanctuary's list as it stood on 26 January 2020, with those details added, and it carries two probable copy errors, in the entries for Delporte/Cirette and Borel/Haudebourg.  The article uses it only for the recognition-year tally. ↩

1. 23a.

   Sourced to a France Télévisions investigation of 18 February 2018.  “Les dossiers des personnes n'ayant pas «le bon profil» sont rejetés, à l'instar de celui d'une musulmane guérie de la maladie de Crohn, et convertie au catholicisme.  Le motif était «d'abord de ne pas lui nuire, sa conversion n'étant pas forcément facile à assumer vis-à-vis de son entourage.»”. ↩

2. 23b.

   Section 1 reconnue remarquable mais pas miraculeuse, en 2011:  “Serge François, d'Angers, guéri à 56 ans, le 12 avril 2002, d'une algie sciatique ; guérison reconnue inexpliquée donc remarquable, mais pas miraculeuse.  L'abandon (qui se révélera provisoire) du qualificatif de « miraculeux » est présenté comme une volonté de ne plus utiliser ce mot jugé galvaudé.”  The article's sources for the sentence are French press reports.  It is used here only for the fact that the word was dropped and came back, which the Sanctuary's own list confirms by resuming "miracle" from Traverso in 2012. ↩

Mangiapan, Théodore, and Vivienne d'Andria.  The Miraculous Cures of Lourdes.  Lourdes: Imprimerie de la Grotte.  1987.  The Medical Bureau's own case-by-case account of cures 1 to 64, each with the bishop who declared it a miracle.  Mangiapan headed the Medical Bureau from 1972 to 1990, and the Sanctuary's press published the book.  The article uses it for the Bureau's own words on the Micheli case and for three recognition dates that disagree with the Sanctuary's list. ↩

1. 24a.

   Section Pierre de RUDDER:  “Due to local infection, and (because of it) the elimination of newly formed bone over the years, a pseudoarthrosis set in at the site of the fracture, and there was not the slightest chance of the bones uniting.”  “Later, for further proof, the bones of both legs were exhumed.  This allowed us to see the objective evidence, the site of the fracture in its healed state, which can now be seen in the moulds in the possession of the Medical Bureau.”  French Wikipedia, footnote 16, says: "La guérison de Pieter De Rudder n'a pas eu lieu à Lourdes même, mais dans un sanctuaire de Notre-Dame de Lourdes, en Belgique." ↩

2. 24b.

   Section Vittorio MICHELI:  “On 16th. April 1962, Vittorio MICHELI, a soldier in the Alpine Corps, was admitted into a hospital in Verona for the diagnosis and treatment of an obscure condition of his left hip.  After various tests, ineffective treatment and also a biopsy, the dreaded diagnosis of a malignant tumour, a sarcoma, was made on 4th. June.” ↩

3. 24c.

   Section Vittorio MICHELI:  “For a whole year he remained under the care of the Military Hospital and Centres, although no anti-mitotic, surgical, medical or physiotherapeutic treatment was applied.  Deterioration, both locally and generally went on relentlessly, with total destruction of his hip joint.” ↩

4. 24d.

   Section Vittorio MICHELI:  “During the pilgrimage, nothing notable happened, except that he bathed, encased from pelvis to foot in a plaster cast.”  “More X-rays were taken there, and in a way difficult to comprehend, they were incorrectly interpreted, being considered identical to his former ones.  This accounts for why it was 6 months after the pilgrimage before proper notice was taken of his excellent health, absence of pain, ability to walk and finally 'the remarkable reconstruction of his hip' the first signs of which had already been present 5 months before!” ↩ ↩

5. 24e.

   Rose Martin:  “Miracle on 5.5.1949, by Mgr Remond, Archbishop of Nice.”  Jeanne Frétel:  “20.10.1950.”  Elisa Seisson:  “12.7.1912.”  Against the Sanctuary's list: 17 March 1958, 20 November 1950, 2 July 1912. ↩

Dukes, Cuthbert.  “Faith Healing.”  British Medical Journal 2:340.  Aug 10, 1957.  A British Medical Journal review of D. J. West's book Eleven Lourdes Miracles (London: Duckworth, 1957), which examined the medical bureau's dossiers on eleven cures from 1937 to 1950.  The reviewer finds very little sign of an inexplicable recovery in them, and says the medical records are too incomplete for most cases to be judged.  The article uses it for the appendix of 98 cures the bureau accepted from 1925 to 1950 and for West's verdict. ↩

1. 25a.

   Page 340:  “An appendix gives a list of all the cures accepted by the Lourdes medical bureau in the period 1925–50, 98 in all, but only about 10% of these have been proclaimed to be 'miraculous.'” ↩

2. 25b.

   Page 340:  Quoting West:  “As far as it goes, and taking the dossiers at their face value, the evidence for anything 'miraculous' in the popular sense is extremely meagre.” ↩

Keener, Craig S.  Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts.  Volume 2.  Pages 675–685.  Baker Academic, Grand Rapids.  2011.  The second volume of a book on the credibility of the New Testament accounts of miracles; its Lourdes discussion runs over pages 675 to 685.  The article calls it the best-sourced modern defence of the cures and quotes its concessions about the Bureau's standards. ↩

1. 26a.

   Page 682:  “Because scientists now know that tuberculosis sometimes is cured spontaneously (and medical treatments are now available), Catholic miracle records of the past half century no longer include new cases.”  Footnote 207, on the same page:  “Nearly half the confirmed cures until 1948 involved tuberculosis.” ↩

2. 26b.

   Page 675:  “As we shall see, some standards are too stringent.”  Page 681:  “For example, no healings were admitted 'between 1913 and 1946.'  Yet between 1925 and 1946, thousands of reported cures appear in the Medical Bureau's records, of which eighty-nine were viewed as inexplicable; those responsible for evaluating them simply did not proclaim any of them as miracles during this period. ... they proclaimed twenty-one cures, including some that had taken place earlier, over the span of a few months, a collection that even today remains roughly a third of those proclaimed there.  That is to say, discerning an individual miracle can involve subjectivity.” ↩

May, Peter.  “Des guérisons miraculeuses à Lourdes ?”  Par la foi.  Translated by Maxime Georgel.  Jan 27, 2026.  A French version, translated by Maxime Georgel, of a 2017 article that Peter May wrote for Science and Christian Belief, published on 27 January 2026.  It is fuller than May's 2022 piece in The Skeptic and carries details the English version omits.  The article uses it for May's fuller account of the Cirolli, Micheli and Bely cases. ↩

1. 27a.

   “J'ai demandé au Dr Mangiapan, auteur de l'ouvrage de référence sur les guérisons de Lourdes, quel était selon lui le miracle le plus impressionnant.  Il a choisi le cas no 65.”  "The most impressive miracle", not literally "his best case"; the paraphrase in the text is May's sense, and the French is given here so a reader can judge it.  May numbers Cirolli 65; the Sanctuary's list makes her the 68th. ↩

2. 27b.

   “Parmi eux figure, à partir de 1963, le cas de Vittorio Michelli (miracle no 63 de Lourdes).  Il a connu une rémission spontanée d'un cancer osseux de la hanche, qui s'est produite très progressivement, en lui laissant une luxation de la hanche, de sorte qu'il marchait avec une boiterie sévère.”  No surgery is mentioned here, which is what makes it inconsistent with May's 2022 account. ↩

3. 27c.

   “Elle ne s'est d'ailleurs jamais complètement résolue ;  elle a par la suite nécessité une chirurgie orthopédique pour redresser sa jambe déformée.” ↩

4. 27d.

   “Ils y sont parvenus et les ont présentées au Dr Kathy Pritchard-Jones, oncologue pédiatrique consultante au Royal Marsden Hospital. ... Elle a rapporté que le tissu était totalement indifférencié, ce qui l'a conduite à conclure qu'il pouvait s'agir d'une infection osseuse, telle que la tuberculose, plutôt que d'une tumeur, et qui se serait finalement résolue spontanément.” ↩

5. 27e.

   “En 1987, Jean-Pierre Bely (no 66) était considéré comme atteint de sclérose en plaques, mais la seule personne du comité médical à avoir voté contre le caractère miraculeux de sa guérison était le neurologue.  Celui-ci estimait que le diagnostic n'avait pas été établi au-delà d'un doute significatif.  Aujourd'hui, l'IRM est cruciale pour poser ce diagnostic difficile.”  And, earlier in the same article:  “Ce n'est qu'à partir des années 1970 que les scanners (CT) sont entrés en usage courant, et à partir de 1980 pour l'IRM.” ↩

Martins, Paulo Nuno.  “Spontaneous cure of 'cauda equina syndrome' was experienced by Sister Bernardette Moriau.”  International Journal of Clinical Studies & Medical Case Reports 9(1):005.  2021.  The journal labels it a case report, but it is not a clinical one: the author is a historian of science, and the case history is translated from Moriau's own memoir, Ma vie est un miracle (2018).  The article uses it only for Moriau's own words about her earlier remission and her decline in 2002. ↩

1. 28a.

   Page 1:  Moriau's own account:  “In the 90s, perhaps due to the these treatments, I had a type of 'remission' of my illness.  Even so, I have been very cautious about my 'spontaneous cure' that occurred in 2008 having been advised to keep 'silence' by the Head of the religious congregation I belong to, who questioned whether this 'spontaneous cure' would not be a transitory phenomenon, such as my 'remission'.  In fact, in 2002, my clinical situation deteriorated very quickly, having been declared invalid.” ↩

Rouby, Hippolyte.  La Vérité sur Lourdes.  Paris: Librairie Critique, E. Nourry.  1910.  A 1910 book by Dr Rouby of Algiers, whose aim in its own words is to prove there was nothing miraculous in the apparitions, and whose four parts run from Bernadette's hysteria to the miraculous spring of Alesia.  The article uses it for his demand that Lebranchu's certificates be published and for his reproducibility objection.  He misdates Lebranchu's visit to 1898; it was August 1892. ↩

1. 29a.

   Page 175:  “pourquoi n'avoir pas publié les certificats de ces deux docteurs, certificats indispensables dans la circonstance pour appuyer le miracle ? ... Si on ne l'a pas fait c'est qu'on ne les avait pas.” ↩

2. 29b.

   Page 94:  “Elle ne guérit pas un unique lupus choisi dans le tas, laissant dans le désespoir une foule d'affligés ; elle guérit la plupart de ceux qui viennent à elle ... en sorte qu'aujourd'hui, le pouvoir de la Vierge se trouve inférieur au pouvoir du radium.” ↩

3. 29c.

   Pages 255–256:  “Le jugement de la Cour d'Appel, jugement irrévocable, avait été rendu le 2 juillet 1901, et le 12 août suivant, la Compagnie avait déclaré acquiescer à l'arrêt.”  “tout cela a été dit, mais tout cela, vrai ou faux, met un doute sur la sincérité du miracle.”  Rouby gives the departure as "le 10 août … sept jours après" the company's acquiescence of 12 August, which is internally inconsistent, so only the two court dates are printed here. ↩

Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes.  John Traynor, 71st miracle at Lourdes.  Dec 8, 2024.  “1926, October 2:  Healing recognized as unexplained in the state of scientific knowledge, by the Bureau des Constatations Médicales de Lourdes, then supposed transmission of the file to the Diocese of Liverpool. ... 2024:  Constitution of a canonical commission by the Diocese of Liverpool.”  A news page on the shrine's own website, announcing that the Archbishop of Liverpool had proclaimed John Traynor's 1923 cure at Lourdes a miracle.  It gives the file's chronology, from the cure on 25 July 1923 and the Bureau's recognition in 1926 to the diocese's canonical commission in 2024.  The article uses it for the date the Church recognized the cure and for the steps that led to that date. ↩

Carrel, Alexis.  The Voyage to Lourdes.  New York: Harper.  Translated by Virgilia Peterson.  1950.  The author's own book about his visit to Lourdes, in an English translation by Virgilia Peterson with a preface by Charles A. Lindbergh.  The book dates the visit to July 1903; the Bureau's records and Jaki give 28 May 1902, the date this article uses. ↩

1. 31a.

   Page 9:  “Skillfully, the nurse laid bare Marie Ferrand's distended belly.  The glistening skin was stretched tight and at the sides the ribs protruded sharply.  The swelling was apparently caused by solid masses, and there was a pocket of fluid under the umbilicus.  It was a classic case of tubercular peritonitis.” ↩

2. 31b.

   Page 36:  “The skin was smooth and white.  Above the narrow hips, was the small, flat, slightly concave abdomen of a young, undernourished girl.” ↩

3. 31c.

   Page 46:  “It was incontestable that a miracle had taken place; it was indeed a miracle, a great one.  But was it the hand of God?  Some day he would know.  Meanwhile it was safe to say it was a cure; that much he could guarantee.” ↩

Kruijthoff, Dirk J.  “Healing after Prayer, an interdisciplinary case study.”  PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.  2023.  A doctoral thesis on healing after prayer in the Netherlands, defended at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on 24 April 2023.  The author visited the Bureau in February 2012 and recorded de Franciscis' figures there.  The article uses it for the Bureau's rate of miracles per dossier. ↩

1. 32a.

   Page 28:  “Thus far 70 cures have been acknowledged as a miracle (since 1858).  This is less than 1% of all cases being reported at the medical bureau.”  “No. of reported cures at the medical bureau during the years before my visit in 2012:  2009 38 reports 2010 33 reports * 2011 48 reports.” ↩

Everson, Tilden C., and Warren H. Cole.  “Spontaneous Regression of Cancer: Preliminary Report.”  Annals of Surgery 144(3):366–383.  Sep 1956.  A 1956 report by two Chicago surgeons on cancers that shrank or disappeared without treatment.  They reviewed more than 600 published or reported cases and kept only 47 documented well enough to accept as probable examples.  The article uses the paper's frequency estimates for a table of expected regressions among cancer pilgrims.  PubMed ID 13363274. ↩

1. 33a.

   Page 366:  “Very few writers have ventured a statement relative to its frequency, but Bashford has estimated it occurs once in 100,000 cases of cancer and Boyers, once in 80,000.”  Both are weak sources, and the article says so.  Everson and Cole's own reference list makes Bashford a second-hand quotation inside a 1935 case report, and Boyers a 1953 letter to the editor of JAMA.  The widely repeated 1 in 60,000 traces to no primary at all and is not used. ↩

Scalfari, Antonio et al.  “The natural history of multiple sclerosis, a geographically based study 10: relapses and long-term disability.”  Brain 133(7):1914–1929.  2010.  Section Results:  “The first inter-attack interval ranged between 0 and 34 years; second attacks occurred after a median 2 years.”  A cohort study of 806 patients in London, Ontario, whose multiple sclerosis began with relapses (flare-ups followed by recovery), followed for 28 years.  It found that frequent relapses in the first two years, and a short gap before the second one, predicted reaching the hard endpoints of needing a walking aid, being bedridden or dying from the disease sooner.  The article uses it for the range of times between a patient's first and second flare-ups, which runs from 0 to 34 years. ↩

Charcot, Jean-Martin.  “The Faith-Cure.”  The New Review 8(44):18–31.  Jan 1893.  An English translation of Charcot's essay "La foi qui guérit", written in December 1892, by a French physician who says he has studied such cures in his own practice for a long time.  It answers the discussion around a famous writer's visit to a shrine, and argues that the instantaneous cures are natural phenomena, produced by the patient's own receptivity to suggestion and limited to what the mind can do to the body.  The article cites it for Charcot's amputee test, his natural-phenomenon thesis, and his report that signs of relapse were as frequent among shrine patients as among patients cured at the Salpêtrière. ↩

1. 35a.

   Page 18:  “From this point of view the faith-cure seems to me to be an ideal method, since it often attains its end when all other means have failed.” ↩

2. 35b.

   Page 19:  “The instantaneous cure produced directly by faith-healing, which is commonly known in medicine by the name of 'miracle,' is, as may be shown in the majority of cases, a natural phenomenon which is produced at all times, in the most different degrees of civilisation, and among the most various religions, and is as irregular in its manifestation as it is diffused in latitude.” ↩

3. 35c.

   Page 19:  “For example, no instance can be found amongst the records sacred to so-called miraculous cures where the faith-cure has availed to restore an amputated limb.” ↩

4. 35d.

   Pages 29–30:  “It is a physiological law that these phenomena do not disappear immediately, and that, as I have often pointed out to my clinical staff, a return of paralysis, or nervous contraction, is to be feared in direct ratio to their persistency.  It is not to be expected that these phenomena should be looked for by those about the shrines, but I have noted them as frequently among the patients who have been cured at a holy place, as among those whose cure has been effected at the Salpêtrière.” ↩ ↩

Zola, Émile.  Lourdes.  Chatto & Windus.  Translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly.  1894.  A novel about a five-day national pilgrimage to Lourdes, with some ninety to one hundred characters, including sick people who are cured and some who are not.  In the preface, which reprints an interview with his friend Robert H. Sherard, Zola says he went to Lourdes in August, the year after his 1891 trip, and grants that some nervous disorders were really cured, while suggesting that other cures may be due to misdiagnosis.  This English edition was published in London in 1894, and the article uses the novel for what Zola wrote about the cures and for the relapse he gives La Grivotte. ↩

1. 36a.

   Page 166:  “Let me merely see a finger cut with a penknife, let me see it dipped in the water, and let it come out with the cut cicatrised.  The miracle will be quite as great, and I shall bow to it respectfully.” ↩

2. 36b.

   Page 456:  “Then a red thread oozed from between her lips, and at last she spat up blood by the throatful.” ↩

Boissarie, Prosper-Gustave.  Heaven's Recent Wonders, or, The Work of Lourdes.  St Louis: B. Herder.  Translated by C. Van der Donckt.  1909.  An English translation, by the Rev. C. Van der Donckt, of a French book by Dr. Boissarie about the cures at Lourdes.  Its introduction asks whether there is any visible witness to the Catholic Church's divine guidance and answers that Lourdes provides one, so the book is a defence of the cures.  The article cites it for Boissarie's printing of Lemarchand's letter fourteen years on. ↩

1. 37a.

   Pages 312–313:  Marie Lemarchand's letter of 7 September:  “I always enjoy perfect health; the horrible trouble from which I suffered so much, and of which I was cured on August 21, 1892, never returned.  I have been married the last six years; five children were born to us.” ↩

2. 37b.

   Page 316:  “When I saw him last, I asked him why he made la Grivotte die, while she is quite well; he replied: 'I am the absolute master of my personages.  I make her live or die to suit my pleasure.'”  Every version of this line traces to Boissarie; there is no independent witness.  Boissarie also repeats the error that Zola made her die. ↩

Nickell, Joe.  Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions and Healing Cures.  Pages 145–151.  Buffalo: Prometheus.  1993.  A book on claimed miracles, from weeping icons and relics to healing cures.  The article uses it for the endorphin hypothesis and the selection-bias point, and for Nickell's account of Anatole France at Lourdes. ↩

1. 38a.

   Page 149:  “Since its founding in 1884, the Lourdes Medical Bureau”.  Page 150:  On West:  “a scrutiny of many Lourdes 'healings' was conducted in 1957 by Dr. Donald J. West, a British psychologist, who concluded that none could be considered medically inexplicable, let alone miraculous.  He observed that virtually all were diseases that were susceptible to psychosomatic influences — cancer and tuberculosis among them”.  On Budd-Chiari:  “The committee did conclude in reaching its decision that they were insufficiently aware of the possibility of natural remission in Budd-Chiari syndrome, but they nevertheless certified that the woman's apparent healing was miraculous.”  Page 151:  “The French writer Anatole France ... seeing all the abandoned crutches and canes: 'What, what, no wooden legs???'” ↩

France, Anatole.  The Garden of Epicurus.  London: John Lane.  Translated by Alfred Allinson.  1908.  Section Essay "Miracle", pages 176–177:  “My companion pointed to these trophies of the sick-room and hospital ward, and whispered in my ear: 'One wooden leg would be more to the point.'  It was the word of a man of sense; but speaking philosophically, the wooden leg would be no whit more convincing than a crutch.”  The words after "whispered in my ear" are the companion's.  A book of essays by Anatole France, in Alfred Allinson's English translation.  The essay "Miracle" describes a visit to Lourdes in August, where crutches hang at the grotto as tokens of cures.  The article uses it for the wooden-leg remark, which it gives to the author's companion, not to France. ↩

Boissarie, Prosper-Gustave.  Les grandes guérisons de Lourdes.  Paris: Téqui.  1900.  An illustrated book of reported cures at Lourdes by the physician Prosper-Gustave Boissarie, written as a defence of them.  It includes a chapter, "Réponse à Zola", on the lecture given at the Cercle du Luxembourg in Paris in November 1893.  The article cites it for Boissarie's Paris stage in 1893, where a blind man and a girl whose short leg had grown were shown. ↩

1. 40a.

   Page 516:  Quoting the Journal des Débats on the Cercle du Luxembourg meeting of November 1893:  “Parmi eux, un aveugle qui avait recouvré la vue, plusieurs tuberculeuses, dont les cavernes s'étaient cicatrisées, une fillette, dont la jambe trop courte avait poussé au contact de l'eau bienfaisante, et, enfin, Elise Rouquet (Marie Lemarchand), la pauvre femme au lupus du roman de M. Zola.” ↩

“The Catholic Church and the Lourdes Cures.”  British Medical Journal 2(2596):1003.  Oct 1910.  “This patient, a woman, S. A., was in 1895 in bed with functional paralysis of the legs, and she was under my care till the time she went to France. ... She had no certificate from me that the disease was incurable ... Result a cure, and the patient walked again.”  “in The Tablet my name had been given as testifying to the miraculous nature of the cure.  I verified the information, and my name had been unwarrantably used.”  A letter to the British Medical Journal from a London physician who had treated a patient later listed as a Lourdes cure.  He says he gave no certificate that her disease was incurable, that his memorandum was returned without comment, and that The Tablet named him as a witness to the miracle, which he says was used without warrant.  The article uses it as a London physician's reply to Gasquet's claim that the cures are tested by every possible means. ↩

Carroll, Robert Todd.  “Lourdes.”  The Skeptic's Dictionary.  2016.  An entry in an online reference work by Robert Todd Carroll, whose site was founded in 1994 and is copyright 1994–2016.  It sets the 67 miracles the Church has validated at Lourdes against the some 200 million people who have made the pilgrimage, and turns the result into a percentage.  The article cites it for Carroll's division of 67 recognitions by some 200 million pilgrims, which the article says should not be used. ↩

1. 42a.

   “Since then, the Church has validated 67 miracles at Lourdes (of the thousands that have been reported) and canonized the peasant girl. ... It is estimated that in recent years about 5 million pilgrims a year visit the shrine at Lourdes.  Over the past 150 years, some 200 million people have made the pilgrimage.  For those who care, that's a success rate of .0000335% or 1 out of every 3 million.”  The often-quoted form "one out of every three million visitors" is a paraphrase of this sentence, not Carroll's wording. ↩

Association Médicale Internationale de Lourdes.  Canonical criteria for a miraculous healing.  2024.  Retrieved Sep 14, 2026.  “This recognized, it is not yet certain that healing comes from God.  It is by the set of circumstances surrounding the healing that we can discern its real origin.”  A web page of the Lourdes medical association that publishes Lambertini's Latin text of the criteria, with the locator Lib. IV, Pars I, Cap. VIII, No. 2.  The association adds its own comment on what a recognized cure does and does not show.  The article cites it for the association's own statement that an unexplained cure is not yet certain to come from God. ↩

Duffin, Jacalyn.  Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World.  New York: Oxford University Press.  2009.  A Vatican canonization study, a book about miracle claims in the Church's canonization process.  It treats Lourdes only in passing, so the article cites it for the author's views on evidence, not for how Lourdes works.  The article uses it for her warning about the skeptic's confidence in an unseen natural explanation. ↩

1. 44a.

   Page 187:  “Ironically, as explained above, this confidence in the existence of an unseen and unfathomable natural explanation is a belief masquerading as fact, which cannot be falsified any more than the proposition that God exists.” ↩