Healing of Catherine Latapie-Chouat

The first cure. Catherine Latapie lived at Loubajac, a few kilometres from Lourdes. She had injured her right hand after a fall from a tree in October 1856; she was at the end of her third pregnancy. The accident caused a subluxation of the humerus and traumatic stretching of the brachial plexus, leaving ulnar paralysis—she could not use the last two fingers of her right hand. During the night of 28 February–1 March 1858, she rose at three in the morning, woke her children, and set off for Lourdes. The Bishop of Tarbes officially recognized the cure as miraculous on 18 January 1862.

The Lourdes Medical Bureau gathered documentation; the International Medical Committee (C.M.I.L.) affirmed the cure was inexplicable in the current state of medical knowledge. The Bishop of Tarbes recognized it on 18 January 1862. Permanent paralysis does not spontaneously reverse. Sudden restoration of function is medically unexplained.