Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (280 page)

It is well known that the Medical Bureau carries out very strict and accurate examinations and that there are unbelievers and sceptics among the doctors. No case of a cure is recorded unless the clinical picture before the event is given in medical certificates. The trouble with certificates is that they are rarely of recent date; they often go back years - to the origin and development of the disease.

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?