Marie Bigot: Blindness, Deafness, and Hemiplegia All Resolved

Marie Bigot, from La Richardais in Brittany, was 32 years old when she first visited Lourdes in October 1952. She had been diagnosed with arachnoiditis of the posterior cranial fossa — structural inflammatory scarring of the meninges — which had produced a triple deficit: complete blindness, complete deafness, and hemiplegia. The October 1952 visit produced no change.

In October 1953 she returned and, during the visit, regained the ability to walk. The following year, on October 8, 1954, she recovered her hearing at the end of the Eucharistic Procession; sight returned on the train home. Specialists confirmed the restoration of both senses in November 1954 and February 1955.

The Lourdes Medical Bureau recognized her cure as medically inexplicable on October 8, 1955. The CMIL dossier was then sent to the diocese; Cardinal Roques proclaimed it miraculous on August 15, 1956. The sequential nature of the recovery across three visits — each restoring one of the three lost functions — is particularly unusual; spontaneous recovery from posterior fossa arachnoiditis does not typically follow such a pattern.

The triple deficit and sequential recovery strengthen this case above the typical MS or TB cures. The pre-MRI diagnostic era is a real limitation, but not a decisive one given the clinical consistency across multiple examinations.