Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Amelie Chagnon was born in France in 1874. As a child she was very much devoted to the Virgin Mary. At age thirteen her foot became red and swollen. In 1889, she went to Lourdes, but was not cured. By age seventeen, a bone in her foot had become thoroughly decayed from tuberculosis. This bone had become soft, and its articulations with other foot bones had been detached. Around the bone was a deep oozing sore. She also had a swollen knee. Treatments at a hospital in Poitiers were not effective, and her maladies were deemed incurable. For three months, she remained in bed, unable to move. During this time she expressed a desire to go once more to Lourdes, and refused further medical treatment (Boissarie 1933, pp. 10–14).

Amelie arrived at Lourdes on August 21, 1891. So convinced was she of a cure that she brought with her a new pair of shoes, although she had not been able to wear shoes for four years. She was dipped once into the waters, but nothing happened. But upon being placed in the water a second time, she felt a sudden snapping of her knee and an intense outflow of pain from her foot. She was cured. Boissarie (1933, pp. 10–11) said: “Caries, sores, tuberculosis of the bone, destroyed articulation—all were cured in a few moments. The sore was replaced by a firm scar. The decayed, movable bone, which marked a bluish trail under the skin, had resumed its normal aspect and firmness. It was joined to the neighboring parts. In the knee there was no more swelling or pain but an entirely healthy articulation.”

One of Amelie’s attendants, Madame de la Salinière, recalled: “There were six of us to support the young girl upon the sheet in the water . . . Between the two immersions, at the moment when we lifted the child upon her sheet to take her out of the water, I perceived the sore upon her foot very distinctly. Upon Amélie’s urgent request: ‘If you will put me back into the water, I am sure I will be cured,’ we went back down the three steps which we had just ascended. . . . At the end of a minute or two, what was our astonishment to see the girl jump out of the sheet and walk, saying: ‘I feel nothing more; the Blessed Virgin has cured me.’ I immediately knelt to examine her foot and saw very distinctly a pink surface which seemed freshly healed.”

Amelie Chagnon then went to the medical bureau, where she was examined by doctors, including Dr. Boissarie, who said (1933, pp. 15–16): “She showed us her certificates declaring that she was afflicted with white swelling of the knee and a sore with decay of the bone. We looked in vain for any trace of these lesions. There was none in the foot or in the knee. . . . The cure . . . had been instantaneous in its essential parts.” Testimony was gathered from physicians who had treated Amelie

Chagnon in Poitiers. Dr. Dupont stated: “For several months I attended Mademoiselle Amélie Chagnon for caries of the bone of the foot and white swelling of the knee. I had decided to extract the whole diseased bone and to inject chloride of zinc into the tissues of the knee. The young girl begged me to defer this treatment until after her return from Lourdes. On the eve of her departure I saw her suffering so much that I wondered how she could stand the fatigue of the journey. She had not left her bed for several months. Upon her return . . . her foot had healed. . . . There was no sensitiveness along the line of the bone. In the knee every movement was possible without pain. The girl knelt, got up and walked without experiencing the slightest suffering” (Boissarie 1933, p. 16). Dupont added, “I have received more than a hundred letters in which I am asked for information about the case. The majority of these letters were signed by colleagues. To all I replied: ‘The disease and the cure are indisputable’” (Boissarie 1933, p. 16). The medical bureau also gathered supporting testimony from the nurses who had attended Chagnon in Poitiers and pilgrims who had accompanied her on her journey to Lourdes.

Marie Briffaut became ill in August 1888. For four years, she had her leg in a cast and could not rise from her bed. She suffered from coxalgia, a disease of the hip joint. The bones of the joint were decaying, and an oozing open sore had formed, from which came pieces of decayed bone. Briffaut’s entire leg was swollen, and she felt intense pain. The infection also poisoned her blood (Boissarie 1933, pp. 22–23). Describing her condition, Briffaut said, “For two years, my tongue was black, my mouth was dry, and I vomited everything I drank, for I took no solid nourishment. One day, when they wished to change the linens, my back and my leg stuck to the cast, and it was necessary to tear the skin before they could raise me; I was all blood. . . . The doctors gradually discontinued their visits. They declared I would not get well and that death would soon come” (Boisarrie 1933, p. 23).

Unable to walk, she made the journey to Lourdes in a coffinlike box. Her neighbors thought she would die on the way. Somehow she survived the rail journey of over seven hundred miles, and arrived at Lourdes in September 1893. Her first bath in the pool at Lourdes gave no result. When she was lowered into the water the next day, she felt something happening. “The pains ceased. My leg was no longer heavy; it seemed as if some one had lifted an enormous weight which was bearing me down” (Boissarie 1933, p. 23). After she was raised out of the water, she said, “I am cured” (Boissarie 1933, p. 23). Her attendants then examined her.

Marie Briffaut said, “There was no longer a sore; the leg was neither black nor swollen; they touched it without giving pain—I was cured!” (Boissarie 1933, p. 23)

In the 1950s, Ruth Cranston, a Protestant researcher, was given access to the BCM records at Lourdes, and produced one of the most authoritative books on the cures there, titled the miracle of lourdes (1955). Here is one of the cases she documented. In 1924, Charles McDonald, of Dublin, Ireland, came down with tuberculosis. The next year, his health improved somewhat, and he moved to South Africa, where he again became ill in 1931. He returned to Dublin, where his condition worsened and was deemed untreatable. In November 1935, he moved into a hospice to prepare for death. As a last chance, he decided to go to Lourdes. At this time he was suffering from Pott’s disease, involving destruction of bone in the twelfth thoracic vertebra, resulting in curvature of the spine. The bone of his right shoulder showed the effects of tubercular arthritis, and he also had nephritis, an acute destructive inflammation of the kidney. McDonald arrived in Lourdes on September 5, 1936. At that time he was unable to walk. The day after bathing in the Lourdes water, he was walking, and when he returned to Ireland a medical examination showed that his tuberculosis, arthritis, and nephritis were cured. Following the BCM procedures, McDonald returned to Lourdes a year later, in September 1937. Thirty-two physicians of the BCM examined him and studied his medical records, which included a statement by McDonald’s doctor that he went to Lourdes with an advanced case of tuberculosis with various complications. The BCM found that McDonald’s case satisfied its criteria for a miraculous healing (Rogo 1982, pp. 287–288).

The BCM report stated: “Charles McDonald has been afflicted with (1) tuberculosis of the left shoulder . . . ; (2) tuberculosis of the dorsal spine . . . ; (3) chronic nephritis characterized by the presence of pus, blood, albumin. These three conditions were in full evolution at the moment of the pilgrimage to Lourdes . . . They were abruptly halted in their evolution on September 7 [1936]. An immediate functional healing after a bath in the piscine was followed in less than four days by . . . return of normal urinary secretion rid of its infectious germs; cessation of pain, return of partial movements of the left arm and lumbar region. . . . No medical explanation, in the present state of science, can be given; considering the extraordinary rapidity of the healing of these tuberculous affections, judged incurable by the specialists called in to treat him, and whose beginning was noted by general infection, later by bony localizations” (Rogo 1982, pp. 288–289).