"In the natural and scientific order, furthermore, each remedy is used in a fixed and regular manner; it has its special virtue proper to a given malady, but is either inefficacious or hurtful in other cases.
"It is not, then, by any property inherent in its composition that the Massabielle water has been able to produce such numerous, diverse, and extraordinary cures, and to extinguish at once diseases of different and opposite characters. Furthermore, science has authoritatively declared, after analysis, that this water has no mineral or therapeutic qualities, and chemically does not differ from other pure waters. Medical science, having been consulted, after mature and conscientious examination, is not less decisive in its conclusions."
"In glancing at the general appearance of these cures," says the medical report, "one cannot fail to be struck by the ease, the promptitude, and instantaneous rapidity with which they spring from their producing cause; from the violation and overthrow of all therapeutic laws and methods which takes place in their accomplishment; from the contradictions offered by them to all the accepted axioms and cautions of science; from that kind of disdain which sports with the chronic nature and long resistance of the disease; from the concealed but real care with which all the circumstances are arranged and combined: everything, in short, shows that the cures wrought belong to an order apart from the habitual course of nature.
"Such phenomena surpass the limits of the human intellect. How, indeed, can it comprehend the opposition which exists:
"Between the simplicity of the means and the greatness of the result?
"Between the unity of the remedy and the variety of the diseases?
"Between the short time employed in the use of this remedy and the lengthy treatment indicated by science?
"Between the sudden efficacy of the former and the long-acknowledged inutility of the latter?
"Between the chronic nature of the diseases and the instantaneous character of the cure?
"There is in all this a contingent force, superior to any that spring from natural causes, and, consequently, foreign to the water of which it has made use to show forth its power?"