Alice Couteault: Multiple Sclerosis Remission at Lourdes Baths

Alice Gourdon (Couteault after marriage), from Bouille-Loretz in western France, had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1949 at age 31. By 1952 the disease had progressed through multiple specialist consultations, with Professor Jean Beauchant of Poitiers among those confirming the diagnosis. She bathed in the Lourdes pools on May 15, 1952, and reported immediate improvement; the symptoms resolved completely.

The Church waited four years before recognition, specifically to test whether the recovery was a natural MS remission. The CMIL examined the case and declared in 1956 that "the diagnosis of the disease was indisputable; all symptoms of the disease had disappeared; and this cure, lasting nearly 4 years, could not be a simple remission." The Archbishop of Bordeaux proclaimed it miraculous.

MS is the most problematic diagnosis in the Lourdes miracle corpus. The disease's natural history includes remissions — sometimes extending years — and in the mid-20th century the imaging tools needed to characterize lesions precisely did not exist. A NIH peer-reviewed analysis of Lourdes cures (2013) specifically flags the four recognized MS cases from the 1947–76 cohort as the weakest cluster in evidential terms.

An honest assessment requires naming MS remission as a genuine competing explanation. The CMIL's 4-year follow-up requirement was methodologically sound; their exclusion of remission is probabilistic, not mechanistic. The authentic score reflects this genuine uncertainty.