ever,
these cures were gradual only, extending through several days or weeks.

In Montgeron's work fourteen distinct cures are minutely reported, all
of persons declared by the attendant physicians to be incurable. Each of
these cures, with the documentary evidence in support of it, occupies
from fifty to one hundred pages of his book. The greater number are
cases of paralysis, usually of one entire side of the body, in some
instances complicated with general dropsy, in others with cancer, in
others again with attacks of apoplexy. There are four cases where the
eyesight was restored,--one of them of a lachrymal fistula; one of a
young Spanish nobleman, who suddenly recovered the use of his right eye,
the left, however, remaining uncured; and there is a case in which a
young woman, deaf and dumb from birth, is reported to have been suddenly
and completely cured on the tomb of M. de Paris, at the moment the
convulsions ceased, immediately repeating, though not understanding, any
word that was spoken to her by the bystanders.

My limits do not permit me to follow Montgeron through the details and
the documentary proof of these cures. That the patient, in each case,
previously examined by some physician of reputation, was pronounced
incurable, does not prove that he was so. Yet, unless Montgeron lie,
some of the cures are inexplicable, upon any received principles of
medical science. One man, (Philippe Sergent,) whose right knee had
shrunk to such a degree that the right leg was, and had been for more
than a year, three finger-breadths shorter than the left, was, according
to the certificates, cured on the spot, threw away his crutches, and
walked home, unaided, followed by a wondering crowd. Another patient,
(Marguerite Thibault,) affected by general dropsy, and whose feet and
legs were swollen to three times their natural size, is reported to have
been cured so suddenly that before she left the tomb her servant could
put on her feet the same slippers she had worn previously to her malady.
This woman had also been afflicted, for three years, with paralysis of
the left side, so complete as to deprive it of all power of motion. Yet
she is stated to have raised herself, unaided, on the tomb, to have
walked from the spot, and even to have ascended the stairs of her house
on her return. The symptom immediately preceding her cure is said to
have been "a beneficent heat, which diffused itself over the entire left
side, so long d