Serge Perrin: Recurring Hemiplegia and Ocular Lesions Healed at Lourdes

Serge Perrin, from Le Lion-d'Angers in France, began experiencing recurring episodes of right hemiplegia and visual loss in February 1964. Over six years the episodes worsened; he became wheelchair-dependent and nearly blind. The diagnosed cause was bilateral carotid artery disorder. During a Lourdes pilgrimage in May 1970 he felt a sudden warmth, his vision returned, and he walked unaided.

At one subsequent medical examination, 170 physicians were present and declared the cure "extraordinary, certain and lasting." The CMIL voted to certify the cure as medically inexplicable. The Bishop of Angers recognized it as miraculous on June 17, 1978.

The case attracted significant critical medical attention after a team of American neurologists reviewed the dossier. They found that neither a lumbar puncture nor a brain scan had been performed — the two tests that would have established or refuted an organic cause for the hemiplegia. Without these, the clinical picture fit conversion disorder precisely: recurring neurological deficits without a fixed organic lesion, resolving abruptly.

This is the weakest case among the formally recognized cures from a medical evidence standpoint. The Church's recognition stands, but the scientific basis for an organic miracle here is substantially undermined by the diagnostic gaps identified by independent reviewers. An honest evidence review must weight this accordingly.