Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/167

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The Process of Canonization
155

as the signatures of eye-witnesses and legal authentications. These seventeen thousand documents, Monsignor Varesi stated, represented but an insignificant fraction of the miracles actually performed by the Absolute, their number having already at a conservative estimate exceeded thirty millions.

In addition to this the Procurator Dei secured detailed expert opinions from the greatest scientific specialists in the world. Professor Gardien, Rector of the medical faculty in Paris, for example, after exhaustive researches, wrote as follows: "Seeing that innumerable cases presented to us for examination were from a medical standpoint completely hopeless and scientifically incurable (paralysis, cancer of the throat, blindness after surgical removal of both eyes, lameness following on amputation of both the lower extremities, death following on complete separation of the head from the trunk, strangulation in a subject hanged two days before, etc.), the medical faculty of the Sorbonne is of the opinion that the so-called miraculous cures in such cases can only be ascribed either to complete ignorance of anatomical and pathological conditions, clinical inexperience, and utter incompetence in medical practice, or—a possibility we do not wish to exclude—to the interference of higher powers not limited by the laws of nature or any knowledge thereof."

Professor Meadow of Glasgow, the psychologist,