DB CHARCOT AND LOURDES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 35, 29 December 1893, Page 11

DB CHARCOT AND LOURDES.

(Ceylon Oatholic Mcsienger.)

There lately died in Paris Dr Charcot, the Docteur en, Chef of the Salpetriere Hospital, the Darwin of Hysteria and Hypnotism, the leader of the school of Materialistic Medicine in France; and thosa who think that the miracles of Lnurdea can be explained away by hypnotic suggestion, though they may be so ignorant as not to know the name of tbeir master, are the disciples of this "re^r apos'le of the Gospel of Dirt. Charcot was undoubtedly a clever man, and had he, like Dr Pasteur, devoted his talents and his labours to the discovery of a remedy for some hitherto incurable malady, be might have earned the listing gratitude of mankind, but that would have brought him no credit from the class among whom he found his admiren and tbe relief of human suffering was not the aim of hie life. He was industrious, bnt he devoted his industry, not to the relief of suffering humanity, bat to efforts to throw discredit on tbe truth of Christianity. He started with a theory in conformity with which be made it tbe business of his life to try to harmonise all the facts that came within his knowledge, and his theory was this : " The soul is an invention of religions which have need of a spiritual domain is which to support themselves. But the reality is that matter, when organised, becomes first sensitive matter, then acting matter, aai finally thinking matter. Science finds no fact that does not fit within the definition of this thesis." Obarcot never spoke disrespectfully of Jesus Christ— he was too much of a gentleman to do anything so vulgar — but be resisted the truth as the Egyptian magicians resisted Moses. He never pretended to believe that there was any fraud about the miracles of Lourdes, but, on tbe contrary, advised patients whom he was unable to care himself to go to Lourdes in order to obtain a cure. None of bis rich patients obtained a cure by going thither, but some of his poor ones did, and then he claimed for himself the credit of the cure, on tbe ground that tbe pilgrimage had been made on his pro* fessiooal recommendation. He does not seem to have been in good faith, for he was careful never to give a patient a certificate which could be cited as a proof of a miracle, and he could never be prevailed upon to go Lourdes himself and judge from his own observation whether the miracles wrought there could be due to natural causes. It is even Baid that, in order to obtain preternatural effects, be secretly profaned sacred things in which he publicly professed to disbelieve ; bat this requires confirmation, sod as we do not wish to believe more evil of a dead man than we can help, !we would rather it were untrue. From his connection with the Freemasons it is, however, by no means improbable. He died suddenly at an hotel in Paris, on the night of tbe Assumption this year, after a jollification with two other medical atheists like himself. We have compared him to the E^yption magicians of old, but they were more truthful than he wae, for when thy found themselves powerless to continue tbeir imitations of Moses, they were honest enough to say : " This is the finger of God " ; whereas Charcot, when there were effected at Lourdes cures which he had himself attempted and failed to accomplish, merely said that the surroundings at Lourdes had on the imaginations of the patients a more potent natural effect than he could produce by tbe power of hia own will. Such was tbe master of those who would fain persuade themselves that tbe miracleß of Lcurdes do not oblige them, under the penalty of sin, to be Catholics ; and it goes without saying that if his theory of the miracles of Lourdes being due to hypnotic suggestion could be proved to be true, Protestants would have no cause to rejoice thereat. The issue is not between Catholicity and Protes tantiam, but between Christianity and Materialism, because if tbe miracles at Lourdes can be accounted for by natural causes, those in the Bible can be explained in a similar manner.