st known and which have proved most
efficacious are those of Lourdes in France[55] and St. Anne de Beaupre
in the province of Quebec. Lourdes owes its reputed healing power to a
belief in a vision of the Virgin received there during the last
century. Over 300,000 persons visit there every year, and no small
proportion of them return with health restored as a reward for their
faith. At Lourdes and many other shrines bathing forms a part of the
ceremony, and on account of the unsanitary conditions in the former
place, there is some danger that the French Government will cause its
abandonment. Charcot, who established the Salpetriere hospital where
hypnotism was so successfully used, sent fifty or sixty patients to
Lourdes every year. He was firmly convinced of the healing power of
faith. One commendable feature of the management at Lourdes is the
opportunity given for investigation; in fact, this is courted. Most of
the sick bring medical details of their diseases; an examining
committee of medical men examine them after they arrive there and
after the cure. About two hundred and fifty doctors visit there every
year, and the widest opportunity is given to them for examination of
the cases, regardless of their nationality or religious belief or
scepticism. This attitude might well be assumed by these in control of
other shrines or of healing cults.

In America thousands flock to the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre
annually. Here are to be found bones, supposed to be the wrist bones
of the holy mother of the Virgin, and many sufferers are able to
testify to their value in the healing of various diseases.

On all parts of the Continent there are shrines of more or less renown
as healing centres. In Normandy the springs of Fecamp or Grand-Andely
are much frequented; in Austria, at Mariazell, Styria, the church is
visited by two hundred thousand pilgrims a year, and has been a centre
of healing since 1157; in Italy, the church of S. Maria dell' Arco,
near Naples, has been a local Lourdes for four hundred years, and
here, as at Amalfi, Palermo, and other places, the ancient practice of
incubation is still prevalent. The adherents of the Eastern Church
also have their shrines, and among the visitors to the shrines of
Greece, many pilgrims are rewarded for their faith by being healed.

It is curious to remark the avidity manifested in all ages, and in all
countries, to obtain possession of some relic of any person who had
been m