146 ARCHBISHOP O'BEIEN ON THE 



If it were a question of the restoration of sight to the blind, or the use of his limbs to 

 a well known cripple, fewer witnesses would be required to beget a reasonable certainty of 

 the cure. Could it be jiossible for even two persons, neighbours and friends of a sightless 

 man, or of one grievously deformed, to be mistaken as to his deliverance from his affliction 

 at the voice of a great teacher, or by the application of some water for which supernatural 

 healing powers were claimed? To affirm this would be to upset the basis of all credibility, 

 and to bring into the every day relations of mankind the paralyzing influence of that most 

 inconsistent of mental aberrations — universal scepticism. 



This subject is protean in the aspects under which it is susceptible of treatment, just as 



manifold are the cases which may be claimed as miraculous, and diverse the points of view 



from which human testimony may be considered. It is sufficient to have demonstrated 



'that the theory of hallucination, or the ignorance of the witnesses, as a warrant for the 



wholesale denial of miracles, is devoid of scientific basis and involves an absurdity. 



To pass for a moment from abstract reasoning to the concrete, we shall briefly outline 

 the history of a fact which caused no inconsiderable stir in medical circles in another part 

 of the world four or five years ago. In the year 1883 Pierre Delanoy, a native of France, 

 who in youth had been a gardener, and afterwards a soldier for many years, was stricken 

 with various ills. He was then forty-three years old, and, having left the army, was work- 

 ing at his trade of gardener. He consulted Professor Charcot who diagnosed his case, and 

 certified to it as locomotor ataxia. In January, 1884, his malady had become so serious 

 that he was obliged to quit work which he never resumed until after the event of August, 

 1889, of which we shall speak later on. He entered the Hotel-Dieu at Paris in January, 

 1884, and for three months was carefully, but unsuccessfully, treated by Dr. Gallard. He 

 was discharged from the hospital and his disease certified to as locomotor ataxia. 



In 1885 he was much worse. There was a marked recrudescence of all the symptoms. 

 For four months, in the liecker Hospital, Dr. Rigal employed all treatments known to 

 modern science for the disease, some of them being of a very heroic nature, but without 

 avail. He was discharged, and again the certificate read, locomotor ataxia. 



In order not to weary with details which would be but a repetition of the above, we 

 may say that between 1885 and August, 1889, he entered twelve hospitals, remaining iu one 

 for a whole year ; in each of these he had the services of the most eminent physicians ; in 

 every case he went out with the ominous words on his certificate, locomotor ataxia. As 

 a matter of fact fourteen doctors who had treated him in the best hospitals of Paris, some 

 of whom were learned professors and members of the Academy of Medicine, without 

 collusion of any sort, but with striking unanimity, agreed in the diagnosis of his ailment. 

 All the judgments are written down in the books of the various hospitals and reproduced 

 on the card given in Paris, to the discharged patient. There can be no question of the 

 genuineness of this evidence. 



All the symptoms that accompany progressive ataxia were manifested by the unfortun- 

 ate suflerer. With this evidence before him no reasonable man will doubt that Pierre Dela- 

 noy was, in 1889, far advanced in the third stage of ataxia. 



