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

On July 4, 1921, Dr. Pierre Cot provided this statement about the medical condition of Mademoiselle Irène Salin, then twenty-one years old, in order to help her qualify for a place on a pilgrimage to Lourdes: “I, the undersigned, Pierre Cot, doctor of the Faculty of Montpellier, living at Maussanne, declare and certify that I have had under my care for two years Mademoiselle Irène Salin, suffering from Pott’s disease in the lumbar region. Actually the patient presents evidence of disease in the last three lumbar vertebrae, with persistent pain in the whole of that region. She has to wear a plaster corset” (Marchand 1924, p. 51). Pott’s disease is tuberculosis of the spine with destruction of bone resulting in curvature of the spine. Dr. Cot’s diagnosis of Pott’s disease was supported by four other physicians and evidence provided by X-rays (Marchand 1924, p. 55).

Salin’s condition was such that she could not walk without assistance. Dr. Cot was not very much in favor of allowing Salin to go on the pilgrimage. He allowed it only on the condition that she remain in her plaster corset and wear a brace called “Bonnet’s splint.” She was also to be supported by a cradlelike apparatus called a gouttière. Salin arrived in Lourdes on August 18, 1921, after a painful journey. During her stay in Lourdes, she was bathed in the pool twice, with no immediate result. On August 23, Salin boarded a train for her home in Provence, expressing her hope that she would in fact someday be cured at Lourdes. During the train ride, she found she could walk. While Salin was riding in a carriage from the train station to her home, Dr. Cot happened to pass by in his car and was astonished to see her cured. On August 26, Dr. Cot visited Salin, removed her splint, and found that all of her symptoms of disease had disappeared.

On September 14, Dr. Cot wrote: “Mademoiselle Irène Salin, aged twenty-one, suffering from Pott’s disease in the lumbar-sacral region, was put in a Bonnet’s splint from March, 1919, to June, 1920; then, as painful symptoms still persisted and walking was impossible, a plaster corset was applied, which she wore from April 5, 1921, to August 26 of the same year. At that date I removed the plaster corset, and state, that then Mademoiselle Salin presented none of the classical signs of Pott’s disease. The movements of anteroand postero-flexion of the spine, as well as the lateral movements, were perfectly free and painless. The patient walked without pain, and felt no fatigue therefrom. I am obliged to avow, with all the impartiality which certificates of this kind ought to have, that it is impossible to explain otherwise than supernatural such a complete and rapid cure” (Marchand 1924, p. 54).

In 1927, at age 13, Louise Jamain was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris. In 1930 she underwent operations at another hospital, which did not arrest the spread of the disease. By

1937, Jamain entered the Laënnec Hospital near death, suffering from pulmonary, intestinal, and peritoneal tuberculosis. Although she could not feed herself and was coughing blood, she decided she wanted to go to Lourdes. On March 28, she boarded a train for Lourdes. On the train and after her arrival in Lourdes, she had severe attacks of coughing, bringing up blood. On April 1, she was taken to see the evening procession at Lourdes, but after fainting she was taken to the hospital, where she lay in her bed motionless, as if dead. Jamain later recalled, “It was 3 o’clock in the morning and I was lying on my bed in the Saint-Michel Hospital at Lourdes. Three friends around my bed were talking about the difficulties of arranging for my funeral and having my body taken back to Paris. They recalled that I had no family, that my father was dead, having been gassed in the war, and that my mother and four brothers had died from tuberculosis. But the first thing I did was to ask for something to eat. My friends brought me some white coffee. You can guess their astonishment because for six months I had been fed only be injections and by serum” (Agnellet 1958, p. 110). After drinking her coffee, Jamain went to sleep. The next morning she got up from her bed feeling hungry and ready to eat something.

Jamain then went to the medical bureau. The doctors were amazed at her recovery. By the time she left on the train to Paris a few hours later, all signs of her illness had disappeared. On arriving in Paris, she was taken to the Laënnec Hospital. Agnellet (1958, p. 111) stated, “The staff were astonished to see walking along the corridor of the chest section a patient who should by rights have been in the cemetery. In the ward where she had been dying a few days before there were incredulous exclamations to check the cure—and perhaps to disprove it. But their efforts resulted in confirmation. There were no signs of the pulmonary lesion on the Xrays and no trace of Koch’s bacilli in the sputum. The cure was clinically established. It was certified by the signatures of Dr. Bezancon and Dr. Cachin, who could hardly be supposed to have received a bribe from the Basilica at Lourdes.” In 1951, Jamain’s cure was certified as miraculous by Church officials.

Gérard Baillie was born in 1940 in France. As a young child he became blind from chorio-retinitis. Agnellet (1958, p. 118) stated: “This disease consists in the infective degeneration of the internal layers of the eye, the choroid and the retina, and is progressive. As the cones and rods which form the sensory nerve endings in the eye and make up the retina are gradually destroyed, the field of vision contracts as though the circular shutter of a camera were being closed in front of the eye. When the destruction reaches the intra-ocular end of the optic nerve, the nerve itself atrophies in its turn. Blindness is then complete and absolutely incurable, since nerve cells never regenerate once their nucleus is destroyed. Only the axon can be restored and in the case of chorio-retinitis the degeneration affects the whole of the cell.”

At two years old, Baillie was placed in the Institute for Blind Children at Arras, France, and specialists there confirmed he was suffering from chorio-retinitis. Two years later, Baillie was taken by his parents to Lourdes. Agnellet (1958, p. 119) stated: “Gérard’s complete blindness on arrival at Lourdes is confirmed by fifteen certificates and the testimony of a hundred people.” After a few days at Lourdes, Baillie started recovering his sight in stages. Doctors at the medical bureau, as well as other eye specialists, confirmed that he could see again. In 1950, the cure was complete and a medical examination “showed that the retinal layers of the eye and the optic nerves were entirely restored” (Agnellet 1958, p. 120).

Gertrude Fulda and her sister were famous music hall dancers in Austria. In 1937, she felt intense pains in her abdomen, and an operation revealed an intestinal perforation and inflammation of the peritoneum, the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity. A few days later, she came down with nephritis, a severe infection of the kidneys. The infection spread to the adrenal glands, which stopped functioning, thus bringing on Addison’s disease. She developed the usual symptoms of the disease. Her skin turned brownish, and she lost her appetite. Soon her body lost almost all of its flesh. Only by injections of hormones did she avoid death for seven years. But finally, a physician announced to Gertrude Fulda’s grandmother that she would soon die. Fulda’s grandmother sent to France for a bottle of Lourdes water. Gertrude washed herself with the water, without result. She then decided that she wanted to go to Lourdes, but was not able to make the journey until 1950. On July 10, she was examined by doctors at the medical bureau, who recommended hormone treatments and would not allow her to bathe at Lourdes. Fulda refused the treatments, and said she would die if not allowed to bathe in the Lourdes waters. On August 8, the Lourdes doctors gave their consent for her to bathe, and she was cured right away. Agnellet (1958, pp. 141–142) stated, “This was not a question of progressive improvement or of convalescence. Gertrude Fulda was cured instantly. The Medical Bureau noted this cure on the 16th August 1950, stating that all symptoms of the illness had disappeared in spite of the suspension of treatment. Her skin lost its discoloration, her pains went and all organic functions immediately became normal. The blood count confirmed the cure and her blood pressure also returned to normal. The suprarenal glands, destroyed by the abscesses around the kidneys, had suddenly been regenerated and were once again secreting into the bloodstream normal amounts of hormones which it had been necessary up to then to introduce artificially into the circulation.” Her cure was verified by her doctor in Vienna and by the doctors of the Lourdes medical bureau when Fulda returned there in 1952.