At best they are issued a few weeks before the decision to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes. But the question also arises whether doctors can give an 'infallible' diagnosis, embracing all symptoms. For example, what diagnostic value has the pronouncement that Mrs. Couteault appeared to be cured on

16th May, 1952? The findings of the Lourdes Medical Bureau could be ascribed a higher degree of scientific certainty only if the same doctors who certified the spontaneous healing process had themselves been observing the patient for a long time before, the miracle. But this strictly scientific method is not feasible with the thousands of sick people who converge on Lourdes from all over the world.

Since the theory of psychosomatic effects developed first by F.G. Alexander in America and later by V. von Weizsacker in Germany, was introduced into medicine, it has been proved in many clinical experiments that bodily processes and organic buffering can be directly influenced by psychic stimuli.

Muscular performance, cardial activity and the separation of digestive secretions, etc., can be altered by suggestion (hypnosis).

Accurate observations have shown that organic diseases often develop in critical life situations - indeed, it is beyond doubt that specific diseases or organs are subject to specific psychic situations.

'Psychosomatics concern a subject who forms "his" disease himself and is not passively "attacked" by it; every disease has its characteristic expression in the living organism's outward manifestation of the psyche.'

Diagnoses (Greek: deciding between) establish typical symptoms of a condition; from them doctors infer therapies which are possible and likely to be successful. Diagnoses do not and cannot always show the cause of a disease or ailment, but only such ultimate absolute knowledge can effect a cure with certainty. If doctors could always recognize all the causes of illness, there would soon be no patients left.

When the Medical Committee at Lourdes examines the findings before and after a cure, it is comparing two different conditions: with the best will in the world it cannot communicate the reasons for the change on the basis of this comparison.

Does the hope of a cure at Lourdes already pave the way for a miracle?

Before a sufferer makes up his mind to make the laborious journey, questions, doubts and hopes have been spinning through his brain for a long time. Has he not long since acquiesced in his fate? Has he not already visited every doctor who was recommended to him? Without success? Should he risk one last attempt to change his destiny on a pilgrimage? Could a miracle actually bring him relief from his pains? If the decision to go on the pilgrimage ripens in this struggle between doubt and hope, does not the miraculous cure begin at this moment? Is not a change in his psychological attitude to the disease initiated?

Dr. Alphoriso Olivieri [3] says of this possibility, 'that the hypothesis of autosuggestion or heterosuggestion (is) quite improbable'. He points to Mrs. Couteault, who clearly recognized that she was suffering from an incurable disease, but adds that she had 'boundless confidence in the efficiency of the baths (at Lourdes) from the time of her departure and during her pilgrimage.'

There is a big contradiction in these lines! Why and where-fore can autosuggestion or heterosuggestion be categorically excluded as causes of the cure, if it is simultaneously admitted that the patient had

'boundless confidence in the efficiency of the baths'? 'Boundless confidence' is an academically toneddown circumlocution for 'faith' and 'faith', according to the Church, is personal conviction, an assumption as opposed to knowledge. Hence 'faith' is a matter of influencing oneself, in other words autosuggestion. Then why explain away a crucial explanation of the cause of cures with a cleft tongue?

The miraculous cure of Gabriel Gargam takes a special place in the annals of Lourdes, for Gargam was not a believer and went to Lourdes against his better judgment. So was it a miracle?

Dr. Franz L. Schleyer [5], who investigated 232 cures with the collaboration of medical experts, came to the conclusion that in the case of Gabriel Gargam 'psychogenous mechanisms were obviously set in motion on the basis of a severe trauma, and that these disorders were finally completely eliminated at Lourdes, after the organic consequences of the trauma had been largely cured beforehand'.

Psychogenous troubles are physically controlled. During his long stay in hospital and afterwards Gargam had inwardly resisted a cure: he was depressed and convinced that he would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He himself had given up the struggle. (This kind of 'flight into sickness'

is a significant symptom of our time!) But Gargam's resistance to being cured was already broken when he agreed to be taken to Lourdes. Gradually the motor nervous system resumed its functions.

The 'shock' of bathing in Lourdes water did the (positive) rest: the will to a healthy life was there again. A miracle? The end of an ailment, effected by a means that no doctor can give a prescription for.

In the course of his investigations Dr. Schleyer stated that 'women between the ages of sixteen and forty-five form the majority of sick people at Lourdes'. Out of 232 cases examined, 185 were female.

Dr. Schleyer explains this as follows: Obviously the sick people at Lourdes consist predominantly of a quite definite type of young woman, characterized by an abnormal facility for the release of involuntary reactions of the nervous system, with a long history of suffering, in the course of which these asthenic women (people of slight build)

have had many serious diseases diagnosed -often with little justification. (It is sometimes astonishing how many different diseases a single female patient is supposed to have had before her pilgrimage to Lourdes.)

At first the Church laid down that the cure of nervous-diseases could not be recognized in the category of miraculous cures. Medical research has thwarted it. Since doctors know that neuroses can unleash organic diseases, whose causes can be clearly explained by the patient's life and conflict situations, that neuroses are motivated by the personality of the patient and are mostly inaccessible medically or surgically, miraculous cures are no longer miraculous. With the progress of medicine genuine miraculous cures will become rarer and rarer. I am reminded of the wise saying of old Seneca that we learnt at school: 'Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas' - Happy the man who has been able to know the causes of things!

Water (especially springs that have appeared suddenly) plays a legendary role at pilgrim shrines. The Hydrological Institute which made a physical and chemical examination of Lourdes' wonder-working water, issued the following analysis on 8th October, 1964: Water with an almost neutral pH-value (measurement of the concentration of free hydrogenions)

Free carbon dioxide content weak Gaseous carbon dioxide nil Water of average hardness (about 14')

Slight mineralization, essentially from calcium carbonate Sulphate and chloride contents very low Soluble iron and organic materials content normal No effects from building materials or sewers In other words: absolutely normal drinking water that cannot have any balneological effect!

Lourdes is world famous for its miraculous cures, but it is not unique. Wherever a 'wonderworking Madonna' is set up at pilgrimage shrines, miracles of all kinds immediately happen and cures are soon reported.

Yet, I do not know of any case of an authentic miracle, for example of a patient getting an amputated leg or arm back again. But at the first-class addresses of the wonder workers who all trace themselves back to almighty God such authentic miracles should be neither impossible nor black magic.