120. A. D. White, Warfare, etc.,2 vol. II, p. 24: E. Berdoe, as cited, p. 615. Other estimates of the proportion of the cured to patients may be found in Dearmer, Body and Soul,9 1912, p. 315, and in Rouby, La Verite sur Lourdes, 1910, p. 272. Rouby thinks that about five out of every thousand patients are cured, that is, about one-half of one per cent; Dearmer can arrive at no more than one per cent from the figures given, and remarks that even if five per cent be allowed, as is asserted by some, the proportion is much smaller than under regular psychotherapeutical treatment.
121. The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. X, 191 1, p. 390; cf. the earlier estimates in his Lourdes, A History of its Apparitions and Cures, E. T., 1908, p. 91.
122. A rather favorable opportunity for estimating the propor- tion of cures to patients seems to be afforded by the figures given concerning the patients from Villepinte, a private asylum for con- sumptive girls, near Paris. Bertrin (E. T., pp. 98 ff.) tells us that for the three years 1896-1898 inclusive, 58 of these girls were sent to Lourdes, of whom 20 were cured. Rouby (pp. 163 ff.) derives from Boissarie a report also for three years (apparently just pre- ceding those given by Bertrin, but not explicitly identified) during which 58 girls were sent to Lourdes, of whom 24 were cured or ameliorated, the cure being maintained with two or three excep- tions. Rouby says he investigated the facts for one of these years, 1894, in which out of 24 girls who were sent, 14 were reported cured or ameliorated; he found that 10 of those so reported afterwards relapsed, leaving only 4 benefited. He went to Villepinte, he says, and investigated personally the facts for 1902, finding that 30 girls had been sent, and all 30 had come back unbenefited; and he quotes Ludovic Naudeau as having investigated the facts for 1901 with the same result — none were benefited. We gather from Bertrin, p. 101, that the same thing was true for 1903. Here, apparently, then, are three consecutive years, 1 901-1903, in which no cures at all were wrought in the Villepinte delegation.
123. Benson, as cited, pp. 25-26.
124. We find Doctor E. Mackey, Dublin Review, October, 1880, pp. 396 f., very properly dissenting when Pere Bonniot (Le Miracle, etc., p. 89) lays stress thus on suddenness as a proof of miraculous- ness in a cure. "Mere suddenness of cure," he says, "is not de- cisive . . . the power of imagination is very great." Cures just as remarkable and just as sudden as those of Lourdes constantly
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