Lourdes in France is a site of Catholic pilgrimage which receives somewhere between 5.5 and 6 million visitors per year, many of them in poor health and in pursuit of a miracle cure by means of Divine intervention. Of this number, many thousands apply to the official Church channels for recognition of what they regard as a miracle cure. Of these, only 66 have so far achieved official miracle status.

This is not an impressive record on the miracle front, given the numbers involved, and fares badly in comparison with the occurrence of spontaneous remission among the broader population of sick people who may or may not attribute their recovery to Divine intercession.

The writer Emile Zola asks why is there not a pile of abandoned wooden legs or prostheses alongside the abandoned crutches at Lourdes, in true defiance of the laws of biology and physics?