Seeing is believing? The form and substance of French medical debates over Lourdes

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 76, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 199-230

  Szabo, Jason ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Hysteria; Lourdes; Medical subjectivity; Miraculous healing; Religious politics; Ruth Harris; Suggestion

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; FRANCE; HISTORY; HUMAN; HYSTERIA; PHYSICIAN ATTITUDE; POLITICS; RELIGION; SPIRITUAL HEALING; SUGGESTION;

AUTOSUGGESTION; CATHOLICISM; FAITH HEALING; FRANCE; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; HYSTERIA; PHYSICIAN'S ROLE; POLITICS; RELIGION AND MEDICINE;

EID: 0036617047     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2002.0099     Document Type: Article

References (132)

1. Jean Martin Charcot, "La foi qui guérit," Revue Hebdomadaire, 1892, 5: 112-32;
2. Jean Martin Charcot, "Faith Cure," New Rev., 1892, 11:244-62.
3. Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (London: Penguin, 1999).
4. Suzanne Kaufman, "Miracles, Medicine, and the Spectacle of Lourdes: Popular Religion and Modernity in Fin-de-siècle France" (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1996), pp. 213, 249.
5. Nowhere is this clearer than when Harris argues that even most contemporary discussions of charismatic or miraculous healing resort to vague accounts of an ill-defined biocultural force - suggestion - to account for them. She implies that this distortion is a legacy of the nineteenth century, stating that "even if divine intervention is rejected as a possibility, reducing such occurrences to the pejorative notion of suggestion is to misconceive the process of healing, and to stay within the analytical trap that Zola and his fellow fin de siècle protagonists created" (Harris, Lourdes [n. 2], p. 305).
6. Harris, Lourdes Ibid., p. 355.
7. Harris seems to recognize that contemporary opinion was hopelessly divided along religious and political lines when she acknowledges the singular success of Emile Zola's disrespectful account of Lourdes in which he dismissed its cures as the product of collective delirium, autosuggestion, and sloppy medicine, noting that "the massive success of the novel suggests that, despite his many detractors, Zola and his vision of Lourdes had somehow triumphed" Harris, Lourdes (ibid., p. 339).
8. Harris points out as much when she writes that "Lourdes was unique as a sanctuary because it so vividly contrasted faith and science, reasserting the importance and even the existence of the miraculous at precisely the moment when science attained an apparently unquestionable authority" Harris, Lourdes (ibid., p. 289).
9. Harris, Lourdes Ibid., p. 11.
10. Attempts to denounce Bernadette's visions as hallucinations continued up to the beginning of the twentieth century, at times relying on a strange mixture of fact and fiction. Authors pointed to the similarity between Bernadette's poses and gestures and hysterical automatisms. But since there was agreement among medical authorities that only a real-life image could serve as the original template for hallucinatory visions, opponents of the supernatural had to introduce a mysterious woman, caught in flagrante delicto at an illicit rendezvous in the grotto, to explain Bernadette's hysterical hallucinations. This extra detail, almost straight out of a police feuilleton, demonstrates that even self-titled anticlerical rationalists were not above including evidence that stretches one's credulity. See Hippolyte Rouby, La vérité sur Lourdes (Paris: A. Vaubourg, 1910).
11. It was recognized by those present that at no time did Bernadette lose her ability to reason. Opponents of Lourdes therefore argued that hallucinations could occur in the context of pathological ecstatic states in people otherwise sane. For details, see Paul Diday, L'examen medical des miracles de Lourdes (Paris: Masson, 1873), pp. 7-27.
12. In a lecture published in L'Union Médicale on 27June 1872, Dr. Voisin, physician at the Salpĉtrière, argued that Bernadette had gone insane and had been shuttled off to an Ursuline convent to hide this fact. This was vehemently denied by the bishop of Nevers. Dr. Robert St.-Cyr, president of the Society of Physicians of La Nièvre and attending physician to the Ursuline convent, testified that Bernadette was of sound mind, putting an end to this debate-at least in the minds of Catholic defenders of Lourdes. For details, see Georges Bertrin, Histoire critique des évènements de Lourdes (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1906), pp. 362-64.
13. The corpse was exhumed on three occasions, including in 1925, forty-six years after her death, during the process of canonization. Catholic authorities secured testimony from medical examiners as to the remarkable state of her body, which had resisted putrefaction. Her conserved body remains on display to this day at the convent in Nevers where she took her vows. For details of the three exhumations and medical examination of her body, see Fr. André Ravier, Le corps de Sainte Bernadette (Paris: I. M. Besançon, n.d.).
14. Fr. de Bonnlot, Le miracle et les sciences médicales (Paris: Librairie Académique, 1879), p. vii.
15. Fr. de Bonnlot, Le miracle et les sciences médicales Ibid., p. vi.
16. Émile Littré, "Des tables parlantes et des esprits frappeurs," Revue des Deux-Mondes, 15 February 1856;
17. Émile Littré, Médecine et médians, 3d ed. (Paris: Librairie Académique, 1875), pp. 75-76.
18. Émile Littré, "Un fragment de médecine rétrospective,"Médecine et médians, 3d ed. in ibid., p. 131.
19. Littré, "Des tables parlantes" (n. 15), p. 72.
20. Littré, "Des tables parlantes" Ibid., pp. 72-73.
21. Paul Diday, in L'Examen médical (n. 10), pp. 72-83, could note that Saint Odile was reputed to have pulled his father out from purgatory (p. 73), or that Saint Hyacinthe was reputed to have crossed great rivers without getting his feet wet (p. 75).
22. This was argued both by Hippolyte Rouby, in La vérité sur Lourdes (n. 9)
23. and by Dr. Jules Bonjour de Lausanne, in "Les guérisons miraculeuses," Revue de Psychothérapie, June 1913, pp. 354-55.
24. This was done first by A. T. Myers and F. W. H. Myers, "Mind-Cure, Faith-Cure, and the Miracles of Lourdes," Proc. Soc. Psychical Res., 1893-94, pp. 160-209.
25. The same point was raised by Pierre Janet in the first chapter of Les médications psychologiques: Études historiques, psychologiques et cliniques sur les méthodes de la psychothérapie (Paris: Alcan, 1919).
26. Dr. Henri Roger, Les miracles (Paris: Crès, 1934).
27. Dr. L. Perret, Erreurs, superstitions, doctrines médicales (Paris: Baillière, 1879), p. 25.
28. Dr. L. Perret, Erreurs, superstitions, doctrines médicales Ibid., pp. 233-39.
29. Perret expressed this attitude clearly when he wrote: "woman, with her exquisite sensitivity, naturally tends to fall for the tricks of the thaumaturge: living mostly in a world of sentiment and emotion, exposed to all forms of the proteus, hysteria, she is always predisposed to accept the delirious principles that a priest or thaumaturge seeks to impose on her, either out of self-interest, or in good faith" Dr. L. Perret, Erreurs, superstitions, doctrines médicales (ibid., p. 231).
30. For a detailed analysis of the link made by nineteenth-century physicians between femininity and hysteria, see Martha Evans, Fits and Starts: A Genealogy of Hysteria in Modern France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
31. René Rémond, L'anticléricalisme en France de 1815 à nos jours (Paris: Fayard, 1976), p. 78.
32. Paul Parfait, L'arsenal de la dévotion: Notes pour servir à l'histoire des superstitions (Paris, 1876), p. 7.
33. Paul Parfait, L'arsenal de la dévotion: Notes pour servir à l'histoire des superstitions Ibid., p. 6.
34. Hippolyte Bernheim, Hypnosis and Suggestion in Psychotherapy: A Treatise on the Nature and Uses of Hypnotism, trans. from the 2d cd. by Christian A. Herter (New York: Jason Aronson, 1973), p. 202 (emphasis added).
35. The neurologist Dr. R. Petit included the impressive diagnostic pedigree of Pierre Delanoy in his account of Delanoy's miraculous cure: no fewer than thirteen different physicians, including several prominent professors and clinicians like Charcot, Ball, and Rigal, had diagnosed him with locomotor ataxia. Ironically for all concerned, he was later discovered to be a malingerer. See Dr. R. Petit, "Ataxie locomotrice progressive," Les Annales de la Grotte (hereafter A de la G), 1889-90, pp. 226-37, 253-63.
36. From "Au jour le jour, M. Zola et le pèlerinage de Lourdes," Le Temps, 26 August 1892;
37. translated and cited by Kaufman, "Miracles" (n.3), pp. 231-32.
38. Émile Littré, "De la doctrine médicale, connue sous le nom d'organicisme,"Journal des Débals, 19 July 1865;
39. reprinted in Médecine et médecins (n. 15), p. 362.
40. Perret, Erreurs (n. 23), p. 3.
41. "Herein follows the still incomplete list [of the cures]... [which we publish] while still renewing all reserves as to the necessity of a complete examination of the facts of each case" (A de la G, 1877-78, p. 124).
42. "It is necessary, to satisfy the pious curiosity of the crowds, to speak of all the sick pilgrims who were cured at the Grotto, without watting for final authentication of the miraculous nature of such a cure that is demanded by all reasonable people. We regret this tradition [of publishing uncontrolled testimonies], and we are obliged to accept all its consequences.... Only let it be known that by the term miraculés we understand only those blessed by a genuine miraculous cure, and in signaling other cases of cure or radical improvement, we do not claim, by any means, that they will not subsequently relapse. Our case reports serve simply as the starting point for further inquiries and serious study. It would be erroneous to ascribe to them any unreasonable importance" (A de la G, 1888-89, p. 101).
43. This practice of printing accounts based on hearsay was viciously attacked by the anticlerical writer A. Chide in Ce qui se passe à Lourdes: Trois jours au Bureau des Constatations (Paris: Boulevard Poissonière, 1913); on pp. 12-13 he went so far as to accuse Catholic papers and journals of fabricating stories of miraculous cures.
44. Dr. G. Boissarie, Lourdes: Histoire médicale, 1858-1891 (Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1891), p. 27.
45. Alexis Carrel, The Voyage to Lourdes, trans. Virgilia Patterson (1950; Fraser, Mich.: Real Life Books, 1994), pp. 61-66, quotation on p. 61.
46. In an article entitled "Le miracle demandé par la science: Une guérison de Lourdes suivie d'autopsie" (A de la G, May 1889, pp. 41-44), Boissarie gave a summary of a case of a torticollis (clipping neck pain and stiffness) diagnosed by Professor Gross at Nancy as Pott's disease, miraculously cured at Lourdes: at autopsy, evidence of healed tuberculosis was discovered, implying that at least part of the woman's symptomatology was organic in nature.
47. The miraculous cure of Pierre de Rudder at the grotto at Oostacker is undoubtably one of the oddest episodes in nineteenth-century medical history. His autopsy revealed evidence of a well-healed fracture without foreshortening. Opponents of Lourdes claimed that he had fabricated the story of his cure, arguing that it was the setting of the fracture several months earlier and the expression of a sequestrum that had cured him; a canonical inquiry, undaunted, declared the cure miraculous in July 1908. See Dr. Gustave Boissarie, Lourdes, les guérisons (Paris: Bonne Presse, 1911-12), 1: 36-46.
48. 4l. In one instance, these students published case reports of miraculous cures. See Alphonse David, "Les malades vu au bureau des constatations medicales à Lourdes," Le Journal des Sciences Médicales de Lille, 3 January 1903, pp. 36-48; 17 January, pp. 61-71; 24 January, pp. 88-95. Two interns wrote a spirited defense of the rational, empirical method practiced at Lourdes:
49. MM. Wallois and Bernard, "Les guérisons de Lourdes," Le Journal de la Crotte (hereafter J de la G), 14 September 1913, #37, n.p.
50. Similar cases can be identified in the twentieth century. Félix de Backer, an important researcher in the area of serotherapy and a proponent of scicntism, came to defend Lourdes after a repeat visit there in 1903 (he had been there thirty years earlier and apparently had returned unimpressed): see Félix de Backer, Lourdes et les médecins (Paris: Maloine, 1904).
51. (A. Vourch, La foi qui guérit: Étude médicale sur quelques cas de guérison de Lourdes [Bourdeaux: Felix et Fils, 1911], p. 6).
52. This text is cited in Boissarie, Lourdes, les guérisons (n. 40), 2: 55.
53. Under the heading of "Principaux médecins témoins des guérisons," Boissaric included the names of several prominent practitioners whose patients were cured at Lourdes. In the case of Dr. R. Petit, a neurologist from Rennes, it was the cure of his son's blindness that converted him: see Dr. Boissarie, "La médecine et le miracle: L'histoire de Lourdes écrite par les médecins," A de la G, 1889-90, pp. 37-39.
54. Published by Boissarie in A de la G, 1893-94, pp. 323-28.
55. Dr. H. Guinier, "Un médecin condamné par les princes de la science met son suprème espoir dans N. D. de Lourdes," J de la G, 21 November 1909, #47.
56. See also "Les médecins en pèlerinage à Lourdes," La Croix, 5 August 1909.
57. Dr. Barnsby wrote: "For my part, I will speak of one case only, the only one that I followed from beginning to end, and I repeat: incredible improvement in the general condition; metamorphosis, in three days, of a patient condemned on all sides" ("Lettre Ouverte de M. Le Professeur Barnsby, de Tours au Dr. Boissarie," J de la G, 1 October 1911, #40; emphasis in original).
58. The physician in question is Dr. Pierre Goret, who published Une observation médicale presque en forme d'expérience, faite à Lourdes en 1920-21 (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1922).
59. Alexis Carrel, L'homme cet inconnu (Paris: Librairie Pilon, 1935), pp. 174-75.
60. The Catholic Church's Canonical Commission recognized only thirty-four miracles during the entire period 1858-1910.
61. For a written summary of their opinion, see jeanne Bon, Thèse sur quelques guérisons de Lourdes (Paris: St-Pères, 1912), pp. 65-66.
62. The details of this trial arc summarized in A. Deschamps, Le cas de Pierre de Rudder et les objections des médecins (Brussels: Librairie de l'Action Catholique, 1913), pp. 99-100.
63. Eduard Aigner, Lourdes im Lichte der deutscher medizinischer Wissenschaft (Munich: J. F. Lehmarm, 1910);
64. idem, "Epikritischen Betrachtungen zum Lourdesprozess," Münchener neueste Nachrichten, 23 November 1909.
65. In her discussion of the case of de Rudder, Ruth Harris relies exclusively on the writings of one staunch defender of Lourdes, George Bertrin. She relates the apparently straightforward account of the cure, which, if true, is truly extraordinary. She laconically acknowledges, in passing, that "opponents of the shrine were far from being convinced by such claims"-appearing to suggest that such opponents were acting in bad faith: Harris, Lourdes (n. 2), pp. 343-46; quotation on p. 346.
66. Deschamps, Le cas de Pierre de Rudder (n. 52), p. 46 (italics in original).
67. De Rudder's disability "pension" had been cut off one year earlier by the children of his original employer. Opponents of the supernatural argued that his leg had been well for several years with only a superficial infection, and that he had continued to pretend to be disabled in order to continue collecting this pension. The pilgrimage provided him with a "way out" of his subterfuge.
68. Hippolyte Rouby introduced evidence of a somatic treatment weeks before the healing that removed the last piece of diseased periosteum and allowed the healing of the superficial lesion; Deschamps accused him of fabricating this evidence. The physician responsible for this treatment, of course, was long since dead, leaving no records of his treatments. See Rouby, La vérité sur Lourdes (n. 9), pp. 123-34;
69. Deschamps, Le cas de Pierre de Rudder (n. 52), pp. 37-38.
70. F. Verhas accused Dr. Deschamps "of having glossed over gaps in testimony or of having done a clever and misleading job while editing them" (F. Verhas, Un miracle de Lourdes-Oostaker; Ou la miraculeuse substitution d'une jambe droite à une jambe gauche [Brussels: Bibliothèque de Propagande, 1911], p. 80). Verhas pointed out that the first three witnesses after the cure spoke of de Rudder's normal right leg, implying that he had shown them the wrong leg, and arguing that his wounds on the left were still in the process of healing.
71. Religious and anticlerical newspapers jousted over this case, proposing that it be reviewed by a medical jury though never agreeing on the jury's composition. Dr. Aigner again accused ajournai of libel after some of his provocative comments provoked an irate response. These polemics, of course, added nothing to the facts of the case. See Deschamps, "Les défis publics," chap. 3 of Le cas de Pierre de Rudder (n. 52), pp. 50-72.
72. More explanations and counterarguments were offered up intermittently. See, for instance, La Chronique Médicale, from 15 July 1907 to 15 April 1908. See also Deschamps, Le cas de Pierre de Rudder (n. 52), pp. 79-85.
73. Dr. Le Bec, Preuves médicales du miracle (Bourges: Veuve Tardy-Pigelet et fils, 1917), p. 17.
74. Such was the case of Mlle, Ravenau, photographed immediately after her cure and one year later: see J de la G, 21 July 1912, #29.
75. No one could dispute that the elderly, austere M. Réné Clément (Basse Pyrénées), cured of a facial epithelioma, looked nothing like one of Charcot's hysterics: see j de la G, 15 February 1915, #7.
76. See, for instance, the photographs of Mile. Louise Vergnae, "cured in the pools," J de la G, 12 November 1905, #46;
77. of Mme. Rouchel, J de la G ibid., 3 June 1906, #22;
78. Rouchel, J de la G 8 ibid., March 1908, #10.
79. And sec especially the pictures of Mile. Marie Borel that include both a frontal portrait of a supremely placid and respectable-looking lady and photographs of her cured reno-cutaneous fistulas: Rouchel, J de la G 8 ibid., 16 October 1910, #42.
80. Quote taken from "Lourdes et les miracles," summary of a conference given by Dr. Boissarie in Montpellier on 12 March 1905, published in J de la G, 26 March 1905, #15.
81. In 1911, Boissarie estimated that there were between 1,000 and 1,500 miraculous cures per year, of which 90 percent went unverified-leaving nonetheless approximately 100 certified miracles per year. Boissarie, Lourdes, les guérisons (n. 40), 1:11-14.
82. It is well documented that during the time that Boissarie ran the Bureau, the number of miraculous cures dramatically exceeded those registered in the years following his death.
83. "We were left to confirm, because of a lack of documentary evidence, fewer marvels than there actually arc" (Joris-Karl Huysmans, Les foules de Lourdes [Paris: Pion, 1908], pp. 264-63).
84. Dr. Marie-Emmanuel-Gabriel Grandmaison de Bruno, Vingt guérisons àLourdes, discutées médicalement (Paris: Beauchesne, 1912), p. 279.
85. Suzanne Kaufman has demonstrated the way in which the oral and written accounts of cures by miraculés increasingly focused on the details of their diagnosis and previous treatments using a novel medicalized idiom: Kaufman, "Miracles" (n. 3), pp. 160, 163, 167, 272-76.
86. Charcot's clinical genius and organizational maneuvering allowed him to consistently place his protégés in important hospital posts, which ensured that the master's methods would dominate French medical education even after his death.
87. G. Guinon, "Review of Les agents provocateurs de l'hystérie," Boston Med. & Surg. J., 1890, p. 89
88. cited in Christopher G. Goetz, Michel Bonduelle, and Toby Gelfand, Charcot: Constructing Neurology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 211.
89. As was noted by Gilles de la Tourette, both he and Charcot based their belief in the existence of hysterical breast tumors with skin abcesses on the cases of miraculous cures from the tomb of the Jansenist deacon of Paris that they had diagnosed via retrospective medicine.
90. Charcot, "La foi qui guérit" (n.1), p. 9.
91. Dr. Noriagof, Notre-Dame de Lourdes et la science de l'occulte (Paris, 1898);
92. Hippolyte Baraduc, La force curatrice à Lourdes et la psychologie du miracle (Paris: Bloud, 1907). Both works incurred the censure of Catholic defenders of Lourdes because they sought to provide a naturalist explanation for events taking place there.
93. Gustave Geley, De l'inconscient au conscient (Paris: Alcan, 1919), p. 241.
94. De Backer, Lourdes et les médecins (n. 42), pp. 166-69.
95. M. Gaud, De certains processus psychiques de guérisons (medical thesis), Lyon, 1907-8.
96. Jules Bonjour de Lausanne, "Les guérisons miraculeuses (suite)," Revue de Psychothérapie, July 1913, pp. 4-5.
97. Jules Bonjour de Lausanne, Revue de Psychothérapie, Ibid, pp. 6-7, 11-13.
98. Dr. A. Grillère, "Lourdes: Constatation des miracles," La Revue (Ancien "Revue des Revues"), vol. XCII, l September 1911, pp. 33-60.
99. These arguments, dating back to 1903, can be found summarized in Joseph Babinski, "Le démembrement de l'hystérie traditionelle," La Semaine Médicak, #1,6 January 1909, pp. 3-8.
100. Dr. Antonio Medicini-Bono, "Definition et nature de l'hystérie. Discussion des rapports de MM. Claude (de Paris) et Schnyder (de Berne)," in Dr. Ed. Long (Secrétaire Général), Comptes rendus du Congrès des médecins, aliénistes, et neurologistes de France et de langue fraņaise, Geneva and Lausanne, 1-7 August 1907, pp. 405-17, quotation on p. 405.
101. This view, long defended by Janet, eventually gained ascendancy. For Janet, the hallmark feature of the neurosis was the splitting off of conscious awareness. Others, like Paul Hartenberg, added only descriptive features to this characterization, such as a child-like tendency to conflate imagined experiences with reality. Finally, some, like Babinski, preferred to insist only that hysterics displayed a pathological degree of suggestibility.
102. Paul Hartenberg, L'hystérie et les hystériques (Paris: Lacan, 1910), p. 254.
103. Paul Hartenberg, L'hystérie et les hystériques Ibid., p. 282.
104. Vourch, La foi qui guérit (n. 42), p. 67.
105. One of those who echoed Vourch was Jeanne Bon, whose Thèse sur quelques guérisons de Lourdes (n. 51), initially presented to the faculty at Lyon in 1907, was rejected because it showed, in the words of one juror (Prof. Vallas), "a sentimental side, not clearly expressed I admit, but clearly discernible upon consideration of the entire work" (see the preface by Dr. Henri Bon, p. vi).
106. Vourch, La foi qui guérit (n. 42), p. 72.
107. Catholic defenders of Lourdes could point to contemporary debates over the quality and interpretation of the "facts" contained in written accounts of the cures of ancient Greece. Archaeologists agreed that the quality of documentation was poor, and that written accounts were often a mixture of fact and legend. Defenders of Lourdes argued that in other cases the illnesses cured at the temple of Aesclepius at Epidaurus were obviously hysterical. They further argued that at the temple the priests combined somatic treatments with appeals for divine intervention, making the temple more like a hospital and the priests more like charlatans. Georges Bertrin argued that, at the very least, such considerations made the scientific analysis of the cures at Epidaurus hopeless. Defenders of Lourdes could further point out that in no other circumstance were there extensively and meticulously documented cures of clearly somatic illnesses. The apparently highly skeptical polemicists who drew analogies between the miracles at Lourdes and cures in other medical and cultural settings were guilty, in Bertrin's opinion, of setting a double standard. When it came to judging Lourdes, not only had they never personally witnessed what went on there, but they had only a very superficial awareness of reported cures from Orthodox Russia and other places, typically based on hearsay. See Vourch, La foi qui guérit ibid., pp. 112-60;
108. and see Georges Bertrin's series of articles published in La Croix, April 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 1911.
109. Dr. P. Dubois, Les psychonévroses et leur traitement moral (Paris: Masson, 1904), pp. 211-12.
110. Dr. Paul Spillman, "Pourquoi faut-il toujours penser à la syphilis," Gazette Médicale de Paris, 1 October 1910, pp. 5-6.
111. Rouby, La vérité sur Lourdes (n. 9), p. 253.
112. Rouby, La vérité sur Lourdes Ibid., pp. 162-05.
113. It should be mentioned that certain medical authors still argued that functional disorders could mimic organic conditions. Using a form of circular reasoning, Professor Raymond argued that hysteria had to be able to cause trophic and vasomotor changes because he had seen such a case cured at Lourdes! See Fulgencc Raymond, "Considérations générales sur l'hystérie," Le Bulletin Médical, 1907, 43: 498, 500.
114. Babinski, for all his incredulity about hysteria's ability to produce somatic phenomena, recognized that functional illnesses of a hysterical nature could mimic somatic illnesses or complicate a coexisting organic condition: see Babinski, "Le démembrement" (n. 82), p. 8.
115. Grillère, "Lourdes" (n. 81), p. 44.
116. Le Fur argued that he hoped to see "each sick person arrive at Lourdes with a serious medical certificate," noting how he had personally witnessed "the great number of inadequate, incomplete, I would say even incompetent certificates that accompanied the patient's charts" (René Le Fur, "Lourdes et les médecins," A de la G, 1901-2, p. 51).
117. René Le Fur, "Lourdes et les médecins," Ibid., pp. 52-56.
118. Carrel wrote: "Mr. Boissarie has published several books on this subject, among others Les grandes guérisons de Lourdes. He wrote these books as though he were a priest and not a doctor, and pious pronouncements pass for observations; coupled with a lack of rigorous analysis or precise deductions. . . . The state of the medical Bureau, in itself, explains this total absence of precision. It consists of a small room and a few cramped examining rooms. In these rooms there are no instruments that would permit one to make proper medical observations. They don't even have a camera." Pierre Guillaume, Médecine, église et foi, XXI'-XX' siècles (Paris: Aubier, 1991), p. 64.
119. Rouby, La verité sur Lourdes (n. 9), p. 83.
120. Grillère, "Lourdes" (n. 81), p. 48.
121. Grillère, "Lourdes" Ibid., pp. 57-58.
122. Dr. Henri Guinier published a case of "a nervous, impressionable girl" with Pott's disease whose friend was cured of the same disorder at Lourdes; in spite of her fervent belief in Lourdes and her conviction that she too would be cured, she came home as sick as ever. For a materialist opponent of Lourdes, this would simply have confirmed that she was truly ill with Pott's disease, in sharp contrast to her friend. See Henri Guinier, "Le surnaturel dans les guérisons de Lourdes," Études, 5 December 1909, p. 583.
123. This argument was made initially by Vourch and was taken up by other authors like Robert van Der Elst. See Vourch, La foi qui guérit (n. 42), pp. 34-36.
124. This point was made by Dr. Pineau in an article published in de la G, 26 November 1911, #48.
125. In the case of Auréie H., discussed above, in addition to the signs of tuberculosis, her sputum was demonstrated to contain large quantities of tubercle bacilli. This case was understandably prominent in all books defending Lourdes.
126. Grandmaison de Bruno, Vingt guérisons à Lourdes (n. 69), p. 233.
127. See, for example, Dr. Pierre Mauriac, "A Case of Protracted, Febrile Polyarticular Infectious Rheumatism with Associated Subluxations and Ankylosis, of Three Years' Duration, Whose Evolution Was Stopped Decisively after a Lourdes' Pilgrimage," presented to La Société de Médecine et de Chirurgie de Bordeaux and published in La Gazette Hebdomadaire des Sciences Médicales de Bordeaux, 10 January 1932, pp. 20-29.
128. This was the conclusion reached by Henri Roger in Les miracles (n. 22).
129. Bernheim, Hypnosis and Suggestion (n. 29), p. 410.107.
130. See, for example, Dr. Pierre Mauriac, "A Case of Protracted, Febrile Polyarticular Infectious Rheumatism with Associated Subluxations and Ankylosis, of Three Years' Duration, Whose Evolution Was Stopped Decisively after a Lourdes' Pilgrimage," presented to La Société de Médecine et de Chirurgie de Bordeaux and published in La Gazette Hebdomadaire des Sciences Médicales de Bordeaux, 10 January 1932, pp. 20-29.
131. This was the conclusion reached by Henri Roger in Les miracles (n. 22).
132. Bernheim, Hypnosis and Suggestion (n. 29), p. 410.