[132] Siècle, Aug. 30, 1858.
[133] Amsterdaamsche Courant, Sept. 9, 1858.
[134] The above extracts are from the Univers, on various dates in August and September, 1858.
[135] Twenty-eighth procès-verbal of the episcopal commission.
The following is the report of one of the physicians appointed to examine this cure:
"The boy Tambourné, at five years of age, showed the symptoms of hip disease in the first stage; very sharp pains in the knee, duller at the hip, a turning out of the foot, lameness at first, afterwards inability to walk without great suffering. The digestive functions became impaired. He had a repugnance to food, and became very much reduced. The disease, going through its first period very rapidly, was threatening sooner or later to put an end to the child's life, when the idea was formed of taking him to the grotto of Lourdes, where his cure was effected instantly.
"The complaint of young Tambourné was of the same class as that of Busquet, but it was more severe, having affected one of the principal joints. Its indications were already most distressing to the eyes of the physician who is able to see what the future has in store.
"It is, no doubt, possible to cure hip-disease, by the means and processes employed by science. Natural sulphurous waters can remove it; but in no case is it possible for them to operate with the rapidity of lightning.
"Instantaneousness of action is so much beyond the healing power by means of which such waters operate, that it may be asserted that there is a fact in the supernatural order in all the cases of immediate cure in which a material lesion has been involved. It hardly needs to be stated that young Tambourné came to the grotto carried by his mother, and that a few moments afterwards he climbed a steep slope, walked and ran the rest of the day, without feeling the least pain, and with as much ease as before the coming on of the disease, etc."
[136] We give in this note the report of the physicians entrusted with the examination of this case by the episcopal commission. It is remarkable for its circumspection. It does not dare to pronounce in favor of a miracle; but such a reserve in so striking a case gives to the reports in which miraculous power is recognized an authority yet more incontestable and conclusive.