| At Lourdes, Spiritual Healing happens. Medical | | | | screened with such care and examined from so |
| records there offer the most organized body of | | | | many points of view, there is overwhelming |
| data stretching back in time. There has been an | | | | evidence that many of them are authentic. |
| international medical commission investigating | | | | Though medical science cannot explain them all, |
| claims of healing at Lourdes since 1947, but the | | | | there can be no doubt that a great number of |
| whole thing actually began in 1858. Of the six | | | | them happened just as their witnesses said. The |
| thousand claims of extraordinary healing that have | | | | Bureau's careful work, furthermore, has produced |
| been made at Lourdes, only sixty-four have | | | | a huge store of case histories, which provide |
| survived the extremely rigorous protocol of the | | | | many insights regarding the body's remarkable |
| medical commission's investigation and made it to | | | | responsiveness to spiritual influence. Its archives |
| the category called "miracle". It's actually quite | | | | conceivably contain the world's largest and richest |
| difficult to be a miracle. One of the first things | | | | source of evidence for the authenticity and |
| that the commission does, when a claim is | | | | power of religious healing. |
| submitted, is reject it if they are aware that the | | | | Alexis Carrel, a Nobel laureate in medicine and |
| claim involves a condition which has been known | | | | medical director of the Rockefeller Institute, told |
| to go into spontaneous remission. For this group, | | | | the story of his first trip to Lourdes in 1903 with |
| spontaneous remission is natural, not supernatural! | | | | painstaking honesty. Having gone there as a |
| Read Cancer Free For Life for many examples of | | | | curious skeptic, he attached himself to a woman |
| spontaneous healing. | | | | with a hopeless case of tubercular peritonitis. While |
| One of those cases, finally validated in 1976, | | | | he watched, her sickly features changed so |
| involved a man named Vittorio Michelli. He had a | | | | dramatically that he felt he might be suffering an |
| sarcoma of the pelvis and was in a full body cast | | | | hallucination. Then, before his eyes, a large |
| in a military hospital for over a year. His leg was | | | | abdominal tumor, which had filled her navel with |
| completely separated from his pelvis at the hip, | | | | pus, disappeared within a few minutes, and to his |
| because the bone was being eaten away by the | | | | astonishment she seemed free of pain. Later that |
| cancer, and there was nothing they could do for | | | | day, when he visited her at a local hospital, he |
| him. It was an incurable condition that was | | | | found her sitting up in bed, eyes gleaming, and her |
| progressing on a daily basis. Eventually he asked | | | | cheeks full of color. Her abdomen seemed normal, |
| to be taken to Lourdes where he was bathed in | | | | showing no sign of the hopeless-looking tumor he |
| water and instantly felt a sensation of electrical | | | | had seen a few hours before, and it didn't hurt |
| charge or heat running through his body. He | | | | when he pressed it. This and other cases |
| immediately claimed to be well, but the doctors at | | | | convinced him that many of the cures at Lourdes |
| Lourdes have seen so many cases with people | | | | were authentic, whether they were "miracles" or |
| saying things like that that they ignored him. Of | | | | not, and could not be attributed solely to the relief |
| course, he had arrived in a stretcher and full body | | | | of functional disorders. He was forced by his |
| cast. Two months later, he was walking with the | | | | experience at Lourdes to admit that human |
| aid of a cane, and today he is alive and well and | | | | beings possessed mysterious capacities which |
| walks with only a slight limp. | | | | science should explore as thoroughly as it did |
| Many doctors who visit Lourdes work with the | | | | germs and new surgical procedures. |
| Bureau des Constatations Medicales in its | | | | Healing of cancer is possible. It might be |
| long-standing effort to verify and understand | | | | miraculous healing, or it might be spontaneous |
| cures there. Founded in 1883, the Bureau requires | | | | remission. Whatever one chooses to call it, it is a |
| sick pilgrims to bring medical documents and | | | | fact that there are thousands of documented |
| register with the Medical Bureau when they arrive | | | | cases around the world of people who have |
| (...) so that they may be cared for properly at the | | | | cured themselves of cancer without medical |
| sanctuary's hospitals and subsequently studied if | | | | intervention, devastating chemotherapy or |
| they are cured. | | | | destructive radiation. |
| Because the cures at Lourdes have been | | | | |