[8] Mr. Deuther incorrectly calls this Conevago.
[9] We think it well to say that no one of these cures, except that of Denys Bouchet, whom the physicians had pronounced absolutely and constitutionally incurable, was declared to be miraculous by the episcopal commission which will be mentioned further on. For these cures, the 10th, 11th, and 16th procès verbaux of the commission may be consulted. Whatever the probability of divine intervention may be in such cases, the church before proclaiming a miracle requires that no natural explanation of the fact should be possible, and sets aside, without affirming or denying, every case in which this condition is not found. She is content to say Nescio.
We shall hereafter have occasion to speak of the work of the commission.
[10] The patient was, in fact, entirely cured at the second visit to Lourdes.
[11] The presence of chloride of sodium (common salt), to say nothing of the others, in abundance, without a decided taste in the water, is a little mysterious. The original reads: "Chlorures de soude, de chaux et de magnésie: abondants."—Note by Translator.
[12] The reader will perhaps like to see the reports of the episcopal commission on this case:
"Hardly had Catherine Latapie-Chouat plunged her hand into the water, than she felt herself to be entirely cured; her fingers recovered their natural suppleness and elasticity, so that she could quickly open and shut them, and use them with as much ease as before the accident of October, 1856.
"From that time she has had no more trouble with them.
"The deformity of the hand of Catherine Latapie, and the impossibility of using it, being due to an anchylosis of the joints of the fingers, and to a complete lesion of the nerves or the flexor tendons, it is certain that the case was a very serious one; as also by the uselessness of all the means of cure used during eighteen months, and by the avowal of the physician, who had declared to this woman that her condition was irremediable.
"Nevertheless, in spite of the failure of such long and repeated attempts, the employment of various active healing agents, and the statement of the physician, this severe lesion disappeared immediately. Now, this sudden disappearance of the infirmity, and restoration of the fingers to their original state, is evidently beyond and above the usual course of nature, and of the laws which govern the efficacy of its agents.