RECENT RECRUDESCENCE OF SUPERSTITION. 763 



nection between cause and effect, would discover in this marvelous 

 phenomenon only the natural result of the kind of religious in- 

 struction that has been systematically imparted by the Catholic 

 clergy to the souls intrusted to their special care and spiritual 

 cure during the last fifty years, and against which Prof. Reusch 

 deemed it necessary to utter his solemn words of protest and of 

 warning. 



Dr. Korum seeks to give his brochure a quasi-scientific charac- 

 ter by a so-called " documentary representation " of the miracles 

 wrought by the " holy coat," consisting of certificates issued by 

 obscure curates and country doctors and indorsed by an episcopal 

 commission of theologians and physicians, who have very dis- 

 creetly forgotten to sign their names to their reports and thus re- 

 lieved themselves of all personal responsibility for their opinions. 

 The Council of Trent decreed that no new miracles are to be ac- 

 cepted as authentic unless allowed and approved by the diocesan 

 bishop, who, after taking the advice of theologians and other 

 pious men, is to come to a decision which shall be consentaneous 

 to truth and piety (veritati et pietati consentanea). Unfortu- 

 nately, the interests of truth and piety are not always identical, 

 and the demands of the former are apt to prove fatal to the claims 

 of the latter. The diseases reported by our author as having been 

 healed were nervous and hysterical affections, chorea or St. Vitus's 

 dance, and a few cases of certain milder forms of lupus and tabes, 

 which, as is well known, often disappear for months and even 

 for years without the aid of medicine or miracles. It is also 

 essential to a miracle that the afflicted person should be instan- 

 taneously relieved, or " cured from that very hour." The bishop, 

 however, records no instance of this kind ; as a rule, a very con- 

 considerable time elapsed, often weeks and months, before the 

 contact with the " holy coat " began to produce any perceptible 

 effects ; meanwhile the patient had been subject to a variety of 

 sanitary influences, such as change of scene and other diversions, 

 any one of which might have brought about the desired result, 

 and in some cases also underwent medical treatment. Under such 

 circumstances it would be the height of absurdity even for those 

 who admit the possibility of the miraculous healing of disease to 

 claim that the recovery was due to supernatural causes. Indeed, 

 of the thirty-eight cures said to have taken place during the 

 exhibition of the "holy coat," Dr. Korum owns that twenty- 

 seven may have been 'effected by natural means, thus leaving 

 only eleven in which he would fain discover the working of di- 

 vine agencies. 



One of the most eminent of modern neuropathologists, the late 

 Prof. Charcot, published shortly before his death an interesting 

 paper on faith-healing, in which he acknowledges the reality of 



