DR. BAKEWELL AND THE CURES AT LOURDES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 1, 30 April 1897, Page 27

DR. BAKEWELL AND THE CURES AT LOURDES.

TO THE EDITOR N.Z. TABLET. Sir, — Someone has sent me a copy of your paper for March 26, containing an article on the subject of my evidence in the case of Philips v. Herrmann and others, tried recently at Wellington. In. the course of the article you accuse me of '• hasty generalisation that all the cures and restorations at Lourdes are simply the result of suggestion," and you say "he would do well to revise his hasty dictum that all the cures and restorations at Lourdes are ' simply the result of suggestion,' " You also say that if after reading your article I do not actually change my views, I shall not speak in the same tone of easy dogmatism with which I "delivered myself before the Court at Wellington." It is a fine example of '• Time's little ironies " for me of all men to be accused of belittling the cures at Lourdes. I am aware that a change has been recently made in the editorial department of the N.Z Tablet, and that the new editor is not acquainted with the fact that in 1885 I wrote a series of articles on the cures at Lourdes, which appeared regularly for some months in the N.Z. Tablet. These papers were based on the perusal — the repeated perusal — of all the cures reported in the Annales de Limrdts up to that date, and in other publications about Lourdes to which I had access. I had in my possession at that time all the published numbers of the Annale*, and have received them regularly every month since direct from Lourdes. I have also been in correspondence with Dr. Boissarie, the head of the Bureau established at Lourdes for investigating into the cases. Since the publication of my papers in the Tablet I have written three papers for English journals on the Lourdes cases ; one in answer to a paper in the Cornhill, another in answer to one in lilackwood, and the third I sent to the London Tablet. The papers in the Cornhill and Blackwood stigmatised the cures as either priestly impostures or effected by the imagination — "suggestion" had not then attracted attention. The editors of both magazines refused insertion to my papers, the editor of lilackwood courteously informing me that they made it a rule never to insert any paper controverting views that had been advocated in the magazine. These observations will, I hope, convince you that my opinions about Lourdes are not ''hasty generalisations," nor my expression of them a " hasty dictum." For twelve or thirteen years I have been engaged in the study of these cases, and although I might, with larger knowledge, be disposed to alter my opinion of some few of them, on the whole it remains unchanged, and may be briefly expressed in your own words, " We admit, further, that a great many of the Lourdes cures — perhaps the great majority of them — are not, when we take them one by one, beyond the forces of nature. But leaving out of the question all the cases that are doubtful or only probable miracles, there still remains a number which it is absolutely impossible to explain by any theory of hypnotism, suggestion, imagination, or anything of the kind, and which must be set down as clear and undoubted miracles." Ido not venture to adopt the last four words, as, to declare a cure a " clear and undoubted miracle," is usurping the prerogative of Rome, but I would say " as clearly and undoubtedly supernatural." The plain fact is that I never said, never thought, that the whole of the cures of Lourdes were the result of suggestion. I should have thought that the editor of the N.Z. Tablet would have had sufficient experience of newspaper reports to make him at least suspicious of their accuracy. As it happens the report of the trials in question were marvels of inaccuracy, and it waa not until my counsel had sent a letter to the manager of the N.Z. Times threatening an action for libel in consequence of its report of my evidence, that the editor sent down its head reporter who gave a report, which, as far as it went, was fairly accurate. Of course in an examination lasting a whole day, a report had to be compressed, and much of what I said was omitted. 1 have not the paper by me, but what I really said was exactly equivalent to your opinion. But in addition I said that I considered the large majority of the cures were, as Charcot maintained, due to magnetic or hypnotic suggestions. And in using the terms magnetism, hypnotism, and suggestion, it must not be forgotten that we are merely using convenient phrases, to express a force, or a series of phenomena (if you prefer it), which is still under investigation, which is most imperfectly known, about which no real scientist will dogmatise, and which personally I should perfer to designate the " X force," as Professor Rontgen calls his luminous rays the " X rays." It has always been a source of perplexity to account for the immense number of cures of diseases not absolutely incurable in themselves, but which had for years resisted every attempt to cure them by ordinary treatment, at the Lourdes pilgrimages. Imagination may do a great deal, but it was difficult to understand how a cold water bath at J .ourdes, or drinking Lourdes water could act on the imagination so forcibly. But the investigations of Charcot at

La Salpetriere and Liebault, Bernheim and others at Nancy and elsewhere have proved conclusively that animal magnetism, hypnotism, or the X force, possesses power over the nerve centres far greater than that required to cure a case of hysterical paralysis or vomiting, even if they had resisted ordinary treatment for years. But even as regards the majority of the cures, I am not disposed to give up the cure to entirely natural causes. Just as fear or joy or offended modesty may influence in a moment the nerve centres, and so produce in the first case pallor of the countenance, palpitation of the heart and trembling of the limbs, — you remember Virgil's graphic description : Obstujtiu Stetcmntque conns, vox favcibu* hacsit — or joy the opposite effect of a brightened eye and a flushed cheek and violent muscular movements — and offended modesty a blush, so I venture to think that the ardent faith and hope of a devout Catholic, may have some unknown but very powerful effect in the nerve centres, particularly on the vaso-motor centres which control the circulation of the blood. Now I suppose, without venturing on the province of the theologian, I may say as a thing known to every Catholic that faith and hope are of supernatural origin. The immense multitudes gathered together at Lourdes are unquestionably in a state of mind in which these virtues are in an extraordinary degree, shall I say developed 1 The force which we call animal magnetism, whatever be its nature, is certainly accumulative in a multitude, as anyone who has been in a crowd addressed by a powerful and soulstirring orator must have felt. May not, therefore, these cures, which though not strictly miraculous, are certainly very wonderful, be, the result of the magnetic suggestion of a large mass of people, all animated by the same faith, the same hope, and lifted out of themselves for the time by the same divine charity ? Apart from all this, however, there remain a certain number of inexplicable cures — cures which if I were a member of the Roman Tribunal appointed to decide on the miraculous nature of cures, I should certainly vote miraculous. However, as I am not a member of this Tribunal (nor is the editor of the Tablet I believe) I can only say that no force in the natural order that I know of, is capable of effecting the cures. — I am, etc., R. H. Bakewell, M.D. Auckland, Holy Thursday, 1897. [We have dealt with Dr. Bakewell' s interesting letter in another column.— Ed. N.Z. Tablet.]