DISEASE - CURE ( Death of Disease - 3)

Miracle Cure.

Excerpts from Book: Death of Disease.

The book discusses the merits and demerits of the yet another method of cure viz. 'Miracle Cure'. Miracle cure have been experienced and reported in different context. In these chapter the miracle cure is at the place 'Lourdes in Southern France.' This place and miracle cure is taken for deliberation and thorough analysis. Because this has been subjected to scientific tests to a fair degree. This place also can be ranked as a place of genuine miracle cure center for over centuries.

Right from 1886 onwards medical authorities have supervised these miracles. Those who supervised stood above any suspicion and the list includes great authorities in the medical fields of those times. In 1953 alone, 1500 doctors from all over the world took part in the examination of the miracle.

The Medical Bureau collected a record of 1200 cases of complete inexplicable cures, yet another 4000 nearly genuine complete cure cases. If the strict medical restrictions as to what constitutes a complete cure are relaxed, the number of cures would reach 10,000. True, as compared to millions who visited Lourdes, the figure looks insignificant. But four significant points further prove the value of Lourdes.

The doctors who argue that Lourdes cures depend upon 'Unknown Natural Forces' wonder and confuse on the uncertainty of such cures. In the cases of some people cure takes place at the bath, in the case of others at the procession. Intense pain precedes some cures, while others come about with no pain at all. The patient feels only a sudden sense of ineffable (inexpressible) well being.

To enumerate the points about Lourdes miracles.

- For over a hundred years, cures have been continuously reported.

- They receive supervision from top medical authorities who hail from various countries and who belong to diverse religious faiths.

- Water at the grotto (cave) reveals no uncommon medical properties.

- A record of over few thousand cures certified after extremely rigorous medical tests with all modern equipment’s proves that 'miracle cure' does occur and constitutes a distinct class amongst several cure media.

- Cure of very young children proves that we commit a fallacy (false notion) in ascribing (assign) the cure to psychological factors entirely.

- The extreme variability suddenness, unpredictability prove that we cannot invoke (pray for) 'Unknown Natural Laws' to explain Lourdes cures.

Latest cure at Lourdes: 

(Ref.  http://www.thelocal.fr/20130722/pilgrim-cured-in-69th-miracle-at-lourdes-shrine)

An Italian woman who suffered from severe hypertension was cured after visiting Lourdes in 1989, the 69th such miracle to take place at the fabled French shrine, a Catholic official said Sunday.

Giovanni Giudici, bishop of Pavia, where Danila Castelli lives, recognized the event as a miracle last month, but flooding at the religious site in south-western France prevented the Lourdes sanctuary from publishing the news earlier.

Born in January 1946, Castelli started suffering from "spontaneous and serious hypertensive crises" - sudden, brutal rises in blood pressure - aged 34, according to the Lourdes website. Tests detected several problems, including a tumor that secretes high amounts of catecholamine - hormones such as adrenalin or dopamine - in her urogenital system. She was operated on several times without any success, the site says.

"In May 1989, during a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Danila gets out of the baths where she had been submerged and she feels an extraordinary feeling of well being," the site said. Several months later, she reported her apparent cure to the Lourdes Office of Medical Observations. After five meetings between 1989 and 2010, the office concluded that "Mrs. Castelli was cured, in a complete and lasting way, from the date of her pilgrimage to Lourdes -- 21 years ago -- of the syndrome she had suffered and without any relation to the treatments and the surgeries she underwent."

The case was passed on to the Lourdes International Medical Committee, which counts some 20 doctors and which certified that the way she healed remains "unexplained according to current scientific knowledge".

Comments by  Swami Vijnananand (S. V.) on miracle cures.

I (S.V.) do not feel the case is that hopeless. People will continue to get cured, as they were being treated before. The essential need is to understand the phenomenon of such cures in its proper perspective.  The chaos exists because of our contradictions, when we attempt to explain miracles by 'Unknown Natural Laws'. This is a contradiction because we have all along presumption in the universality of natural laws.

Therefore, the way out of chaos lies in direction of going deeper and to dive down to genuine fundamentals in the sea of pseudo-scientific concepts and search for the basic natural laws of disease and cure. We should either call all cures in the dispensaries as 'miracles' or turn miracles at Lourdes and other places – as taking place by some 'natural law', which should be made known. It would be a bitter pill for practitioners of all pathies to allow all their cures to be called miracles. We therefore, hope that in mere self-protection, they would join our search for an 'all covering natural laws' that explains disease and makes the myths of miracle an outcast (deleted from the main course).

First and foremost is that –

The idea of all enveloping medicine has to be abandoned.

The observation of Dr. Clark – Kennedy are important – "No two people, however – although identical twins may come very near to it, are the same".

The medicine should suit individual (The patient should be treated and not the disease).

(To be continued)


Vijay R. Joshi.