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The town of Lourdes in France is situated in the High Pyrenees, on the banks of the mountain stream Gave du Pau. Historically it has always been dedicated to the Virgin Mother Mary who during feudal times was the suzerain of this section. There are twenty-two places in that Department (comparable to our state) in which the Virgin Mother Mary is believed to have appeared. On February 11, 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, a girl of fourteen who was being prepared for her first communion, saw in a niche above a grotto in the ancient rock, the Massabielle, an apparition of the Virgin Mother Mary. In all she saw this apparition nineteen times. During one of these visions she was directed to drink and to wash her face in a corner of the cave where she saw only mud. She dug with her hands and uncovered a spring at which shortly thereafter cures of a miraculous nature were reported. It was this spring which, uncovered, now flows at the rate of thirty thousand litres of water a day and which furnishes the water for the ceremonial baths given to the pilgrims who go there.
During one of these visions the apparition revealed herself to Bernadette as the Immaculate Conception, thus later coming to be identified by the clergy and the people as The Blessed Virgin.
It is necessary to give these facts in order that one may understand the faith that animates the pilgrims and the sick that come to Lourdes.
There is a Medical Bureau at Lourdes which consists of a chairman, Dr. Vallet, assisted by doctors who have joined the organization of Our Lady of Lourdes, whose purpose is to pass