Lourdes Medical Bureau

The Lourdes Medical Bureau (Bureau des Constatations Médicales) is an official medical organization based in Lourdes, France, within the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes. Its function is to transfer medical investigation of apparent cures associated with the shrine of Lourdes to the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (Comité Médical International de Lourdes). In 2013 it is presided over by Mgr Nicolas Brouwet, bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, and François-Bernard Michel, also president of the Académie Nationale de Médecine

The term Medical Bureau is also used by the International Medical Association of Lourdes to refer to a special conference of its members, which may be called to investigate reports of inexplicable healing.

The apparitions at Lourdes took place between 11 February and 16 July 1858. After this time, reports of apparently miraculous cures began to accumulate, prompting calls for the Roman Catholic Church to recognise these events as miracles. The earliest investigations of these cases were carried out by an Episcopal Commission of Inquiry led by Canon Germain Baradère and reporting directly to Mgr Laurence, bishop of Tarbes. The commission's earliest work was conducted without medical consultation, with only clerical opinion being sought as to the nature of the cures.

In 1859, Professor Henri Vergez from the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier was appointed medical consultant to the Episcopal Commission of Inquiry. Vergez's views were often at odds with those of his clerical colleagues. Vergez decided that only eight of the early cases were genuinely inexplicable.

In 1883 a body called the Bureau des Constatations Médicales was established by doctors affiliated with the sanctuary. This was the forerunner of the current Medical Bureau. Its first titular head was the nobleman Baron Dunot de Saint-Maclou, and the Bureau was housed at the residence of the Garaison Fathers in Lourdes. Following the establishment of the Bureau des Constatations Médicales, the number of recognised cures dropped dramatically, from 143 in 1883 to only 83 in 1884.

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