# Lourdes water

**Eau de Lourdes**

**Known today as.** Water from the spring in the grotto of Massabielle at Lourdes, uncovered by Bernadette Soubirous on 25 February 1858 during the apparitions she reported.

Kind: Sacramental

## What was it used for?

Drunk and bathed in by pilgrims, and carried away in bottles, often shaped as the Virgin, to the sick at home.

## What does modern science say?

Some millions of pilgrims visit each year; analysis finds ordinary spring water.

## What lore surrounds it?

Cures reported at Lourdes have been examined by a medical bureau since 1883; the Church has recognized about seventy as miraculous.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia relates that the apparition “one day told her to drink of a mysterious fountain, in the grotto itself, the existence of which was unknown, and of which there was no sign, but which immediately gushed forth.” Its author counted 3,962 recoveries in the first half-century and insists that the water itself is nothing: “it was then declared by an eminent chemist officially appointed to make the analysis and his statement has since been corroborated, that the water contains no curative properties of a natural character,” and “many ailing ones are cured without ever bathing in the basins of the Grotto; this decides the question.” The Bureau des Constatations Médicales “is free to all physicians, whatever their nationality or religious belief.”

## Sources

- Harris, R. (1999). *Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age*. London: Allen Lane.
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Lourdes, Notre-Dame de.” newadvent.org/cathen/09389b.htm

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*Lourdes water.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/lourdes-water

Historical description, not medical advice.