134. Zola, wishing to express these limitations in a word, said he would not ask very much — only let some one take a knife and cut his finger and immerse it in the water, and if it came out cured he would say nothing more. Charcot puts it in a higher form: "Faith- cure has never availed to restore an amputated limb" (as cited, p. 19). Percy Dearmer, having theories of his own, makes merry over such statements. There is no such thing as the supernatural, he says; all that God does is natural. But that carries with it that it is not unnatural. The only limit to such cures as we see at
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Lourdes, then, is that nothing unnatural can happen there. Of course, then, faith cannot grow a new leg. But that is only because we are men and not crabs, and cannot be expected to act in a crus- tacean manner. Grace can turn a sick man into a well one, but it cannot turn a man into an apple-tree or a cactus. God must act on the lines of nature; the supernatural is not the unnatural (Body and Soul,9 pp. 90 ff.). All this is, of course, pure absurdity. It is to be noted, not obscured, that there are limitations to such cures; that a lost member cannot be restored by them, not even a lost tooth. It is only to dodge the question to say that such things are out of the question; they are not out of the question but very much in it — when it is a question of miracle. It is easy to say, "Better far to hop about on crutches than to have the soul of a crab," but it is better simply to acknowledge that there are physical disabilities which Lourdes cannot repair, and that the reason is that they are above the power of nature to repair. It should be noted in passing that Lourdes does not admit that there are any physical disabilities which she cannot repair, and that the reason is that she, unlike Dearmer, believes in the supernatural, and be- lieves that she wields it.
135. Ed. 7, 1905, p. 55. (E. T., Medicine and Mind.)
136. The New Review, January, 1893, p. 31: "I have seen pa- tients return from the shrines now in vogue who had been sent thither with my consent, owing to my own inability to inspire the operation of the faith-cure. I have examined the limbs affected with paralysis or contraction some days before, and have seen the gradual disappearance of the local sensitive spots which always remain for some time after the cure of the actual disease — paralysis or contraction."
137. The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders, E. T., 1908, p. 72: A patient, "whose neck and jaw had been immobilized for years, and who had undergone unsuccessfully medical and surgical treatment from the most renowned clinicians, found sudden cure in the piscina at Lourdes." Yet Dubois does not think well of Lourdes (p. 211); that is to say, after experience with it. His ex- pectations had been good, and he was disillusioned only by experi- ence. "The cures there," he says, "are in fact rare." Super- stition goes all lengths, and — well, "Lourdes is not very far from Tarascon."
138. As cited, p. 271.
139. Jean de Bonnefon has accumulated at the end of his trenchant pamphlet, Faut-il fermer Lourdes? 1906 — in which he argues that Lourdes should be abolished by the state — a number of
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opinions from French physicians to whom a questionnaire was sent, asking whether they thought the enterprise of Lourdes useful or injurious to the sick, whether they thought the piscinas were dangerous, on account of the chill or the filth, whether the long pilgrimages of the sick across France were or were not a menace to the country, and whether they thought the laws of hygiene were observed at Lourdes. The opinions of the physicians vary greatly: many are thoroughly hostile, a few are wholly favorable. What is noticeable is that a considerable number believe it is useful and ought to be sustained, although they have no belief whatever in the supernaturalness of the cures wrought there. One physician, for example, writes: "For a great number of sick people, and par- ticularly women, Lourdes is a benefit. . . . Free from all religious opinions, I never hesitate to send to Lourdes sick people who are in the particular mental condition to receive benefit from it, and I have often had occasion to congratulate myself on having done so" (p. 51). Another writes in a less genial spirit (p. 51): "The enter- prise of Lourdes is useful for feeble-minded people, and there are legions of these in our fine land of France. ... I know Lourdes, and it seems to me that they are as filthy there — in the medical sense of the word — as they are everywhere else in France."