AT the time when Monseigneur had just commanded, in the name of Religion, an investigation relative to those extraordinary facts which the civil authorities had condemned, persecuted, and wished to suppress a priori, without deigning even to study or discuss them; on the very same day, when the Prelate’s letter to the Minister of Public Worship was despatched, M. Filhol, the illustrious Professor of Chemistry in the Faculty of Toulouse, returned the decisive verdict of Science on the water of the Grotto at Lourdes. The conscientious and most complete labor of the great chemist annihilated the official analysis of M. Latour de Trie, that savant of the Prefecture, who had been so much cried up by by the Prefect.
The undersigned, Professor of chemistry to the Faculty of Science at Toulouse, Professor of Pharmacy and Toxicology at the School of Medicine in the same town, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, certifies to having analyzed a certain water coming from a Spring, which has gushed forth in the environs of Lourdes. . . .
The result of this analysis is, that the water of the Grotto at Lourdes may be considered from its component parts to be a water fit for drinking purpose, analogous to the majority of those which are met with on mountains whose soil is rich in limestone.
The extraordinary effects which are positively attributed to the use of this water, cannot―at least in the present state of science―be explained by the nature of the salts, whose existence is revealed by this analysis.
This water does not contain any active substance capable of endowing it with marked therapeutic virtues.
It may be drank without inconvenience.
(Signed) FILHOL,
TOULOUSE, August 7th, 1858.
Thus when confronted with the examination of the celebrated chemist, all the pseudo-scientific scaffolding on which the Free-thinkers, Savants and the Prefect had with so much pain constructed, their theory of extraordinary cures fell to the ground. According to the verdict returned by true science, the water of the Grotto was not mineral, nor did it possess any curative virtues. And yet it effected cures. There remained nothing for those, who had audaciously put prominently forward false explanations, except the confusion attending their attempt and the impossibility from that time forth of withdrawing the public acknowledgment they had made of the cures accomplished. Falsehood and error were taken in their own nets.
