MIRACLES AT LOURDES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIII, Issue 29, 15 November 1895, Page 29

MIRACLES AT LOURDES.

Fatheb Baillt, Superior of the Peres de la Croix, who organised the pilgrimage now in progress to the Sacred Grot to at Lourdes, has (according to the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph) assured an intervitwtr that the miracles which have been already accomplished this year are exceedingly numerous. '' We are constantly receiving telegrams," he said, " stating that the cry, * I am healed t I am hialed I ' resounds at each instant under the roof of the Grotto. The cnres that have been witnessed by medical men have a ipecial importance this year because these doctors include several foreign practitioners, and notably three English doctors, all three Protestants who have come as a result of iha miraculous cure last year of a young girl who had been for a very long time vainly treated in the London hospitals." Pressed for particulars of the latest miraclea, Father Bailly declared that Jean Mabe, a young man twenty-six years of age, living ia the Rue des Ohantiers, Versailles, bad, following an attack of typhoid fever ia April, been unable to walk until yesterday morning, when he entered the well. When he came out the pain had gone and the patient was able to use his limbs freely. M. Bchurr, a resident of OharentoD, who was a victim to chronic rheumatism, and who for fourteen years had relied upon crutches, hid been able to throw them away upon leaving the bah. The Father citid other cases, and said that the miracles were to be reckoned by hundreds, and the railway servants of the Orleans line could testify to the fact that on the journey to Lourdes the beds in the pilgrim trains were full of iovalids, but that on their return the couches were empty. The grotto is now beiog visited by about 18,000 pilgrims a day. A special service for the. Enghsh-spaaking pilgrimage will be held on the 29th inst., at the British and American Catholic Church, in the Avenue Hoche. It may be added that 1,200 Alsace-Lorraine^ have passed through Paris on their way to Lourdes, the total number of pilgrims having tbis August exceeded 25,000.

Of especial interest, in connection with the above, is the following from the Mtdical Record : —

An exhibition of miraculouß "cures" has been taking place in Paris, Fifteen persons who declare that they were miracnlously cared at Lourdes of terrible diseases presented themselves for inspection at a lecture given by Dr Boisaarie, of the Bureau des Oonstatations at Loardes. Dr Boissarie's object was to refute varioaß statements nude by M. Zola in his book on Lourdes, and in order to prove that the cures which take place at the scene of Bernadette'a vision •re truly miraculous he brought from various parts of Franoe fifteen persons healed within the last two or three years at Lourdes of diseases whicb medical science had pronounced incurable. Among these was the young woman, Marie Demarchand, who figures in M Zola's hook ai Elise Rouquet. She went to Lourdea horribly disfigured with lupus, which had partly destroyed her whole face. Zola gives a realistic description of her appearance, which is anything but pleasant reading. It was, neverthtless, read at the meeting, and then Marie was asked to stand up and show her face. As she "Sid so there was a genwal exclamation of wonder. Tht victim of JBpns whom the doctors had abandoned had become again quite a pretty, fresh-factd country girl, whom medical men declared to be perfectly healthy.

Another subject was a man who was pronounced at the Salpetriere Hospital t> be suffering from paralysis and blindness, caused by atrophy of tbe optic nerves. He went to Lourdes and recovered his ■ight and health instantaneously. Then there was a girl who wan cured of a cancer which was so bad that a surgeon refused to operate upon it, and another of a wound in the foot caused by caries of the bone. The procession of " miracles," and the medical diagnoseo and

certificates which were read, produced an extraordinary impression. The audience was largely composed of doctors and medical students.