by Donald West
Inappropriate attachment to the therapist is always a danger of protracted contacts. Doubtless trying to arouse interest, one lady liked to discuss unusual sexual topics – such as the use of a biro pen to relieve her pet cat when on heat. Unwisely, when leaving the clinic, at her insistence I agreed that her boyfriend should paint my portrait. This proved more demanding than expected, requiring repeated sittings with the artist, an established painter, who was obviously discontented with the task. The painting was in the striking style of his tutor Kokoschka, but was unflattering and unvarnished. The nose has appeared to enlarge over the years. I call it my Dorian Grey picture! I have tried to sell it without success. During my time at this clinic my homosexuality threatened to cause a crisis. A young male patient wanted to talk about his own homosexuality. In those days, most people, including homosexuals themselves, considered it a sad affliction. My task was to point out the choices available: renounce sexuality, be reconciled to a secret criminal sexual life, or undergo problematic and often ineffectual treatments. These consisted of long term psychoanalysis, often prohibitively expensive, or aversive de-conditioning, which meant receiving punitive electric shocks at signs of sexual arousal to homo-erotic pictures. Analysts themselves seem to have lost faith in the former method and the latter has since been widely condemned, although it should be realised that the practitioners who used it in the Fifties were acting in all honesty in the belief that they were trying to rescue their patients from a lifetime of suffering.
Coming from a trusted doctor, guidance had to be delivered with clinical detachment and apparent objectivity. That façade was destroyed when the patient spotted me one evening at a gay bar. At our next session he told me he had felt shocked and angry at my pretence of innocence. He had intended to denounce me to the authorities as unfit to counsel unsuspecting patients. However, on reflection, he had decided that having the same problem was not my fault and he would not take action, but he did not want to see me again. I had a lucky escape, but the incident illustrates both the problems of enforced hypocrisy and the fact that the abhorrence, that used to be almost universal, can infect homosexuals, so that they not only feel guilty about themselves, but blame others with similar predisposition.
MISFORTUNE PROMOTES RESEARCH
Illness
A crisis unrelated to sex interrupted work at the Marlborough clinic. Some years earlier, a medical friend from Liverpool who was visiting, urged me, almost as a joke, to call in at the local University College Hospital A&E Dept. on account of an odd, nagging ache in the shoulder. They found a small tuberculous lesion in one lung, causing phrenic nerve irritation from pleural inflammation. No action was advised save for follow-up X-rays that showed no development. Ostrich-like, I gave up on further follow-up until pains recurred, further lesions were found and immediate bed rest was ordered as a preliminary to hospitalisation. I was at the time still living above the SPR office and busying myself as much with their affairs as with clinic work, simultaneously chasing after sex and enjoying irregular hours and unhealthy, bachelor eating habits. Amusingly, the SPR’s Hon. Secretary, W.H.Salter, a dignified representative of the Society’s illustrious traditions, and undisputed controller of its affairs, attributed my plight to not having settled down with young Betty, the researcher from Rhine’s laboratory!
While receiving undeserved attention from everyone around, I lapsed into silly panic. Hedda Carington, widow of Whately Carington (the Cambridge psychologist who had been a prominent psychical researcher) came to stay to look after the ‘invalid’. The indefatigable Mollie Goldney volunteered to keep an eye on the flat on behalf of the SPR while I was in hospital and secure continuance of the tenancy. My fellow occupants had to behave themselves, at least to the extent of not attracting scandal, although many gay parties went on while I was away. The SPR’s Hon. Treasurer, the elderly and aristocratic Admiral Strutt (so elderly he admitted to having once met Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s boyfriend) journeyed to the sanatorium to offer me personal financial help in case of need.
In nearby University College Hospital I was given streptomycin and other antibiotics which were highly effective, although initially inducing fever and sweats and more panic, with attacks of anxiety-induced palpitation (paroxysmal tachycardia). Wearying of this, the consultant threatened transfer to the less comfortable St Pancras Hospital. That must have calmed me down, for they transferred me instead to a prestigious private clinic in the Harley Street area and from there to a private room in the King Edward VII Hospital in Midhurst, an institution catering for ‘officers and gentlemen’. At that time NHS doctors looked after their own in style!
The traditional sanatorium regime was still in vogue, consisting of months-long confinement to bed, followed by very gradual resumption of mild activity. As the effectiveness of antibiotics became evident, this routine was discontinued, but it was too late for me to benefit. Fresh air was also considered beneficial, so the French windows of the room were left partially open. Because it was a snowy winter the thermometer was apt to freeze into its container. The length of detention was unforeseeable, dependent on the detection of fluctuations in temperature and blood sedimentation rate. The constant anxiety this uncertainty produced gave me a lasting sympathy for prisoners under indeterminate sentences. A brief episode of fever that might have had dire significance, following the consumption of some dubious frankfurter sausages, put me off that item for a long time.
The situation had its compensations. Having my own room permitted some furtive sexual release when a gay friend came to visit. It also gave ample opportunity for reading and writing and I began to think of writing a book about homosexuality. My first intention was to base it on case histories – my own and friends I knew – but the publisher, Lord Horder, visited and wisely discouraged that scheme in favour of a more ‘scientific’ approach, similar to my first book on psychical research. The project had to wait until I had access to libraries and academic journals, the internet having not yet come into being.
The most significant consequence of the sanatorium experience was making the acquaintance of a fellow patient, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC, the famous wartime pilot, later to found the Cheshire Homes and marry a fellow philanthropist, Sue Ryder. He was a devout Roman Catholic and interested in religious miracles and faith healing. When he learned of my interest in psychical research and that I thought an examination of the evidence for miraculous cures at Lourdes would be worthwhile, he offered to give me an introduction to the Lourdes Medical Bureau where records were kept. The medium Eileen Garrett, who headed the Parapsychology Foundation in New York, provided a grant to pay for visits to Lourdes to analyse the documentary evidence. This was considered a suitable occupation for a convalescent. Resuming duty at Marlborough Day Hospital long before the Lourdes inquiry was finished, I was aided by a psychiatric social worker at that clinic, who volunteered time and effort in the translation of French medical documents. She had been involved with the French Resistance during the Second World War. This was Dorothy Koestler, first wife of the famous writer Arthur Koestler, who was to bequeath money for a Koestler Chair in parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh. At the time I did not know of his interest in the subject and had not yet met him.
Eleven Lourdes Miracles
As I was soon to discover, almost insuperable difficulties confront a researcher trying to evaluate the evidence for ‘miraculous’ or ‘inexplicable’ cures at Lourdes, not least because the religious authorities appeared to be keener to promote their faith than to adopt an objective approach. Unexpected recoveries are to be expected from time to time and must sometimes occur by chance during one of the millions of visits to Lourdes by all kinds of sick people. Sudden disappearance of symptoms, like the loss of a toothache just before a visit to the dentist, can have psychological causes. The reputation of Lourdes, the expectant crowds, the chanting candle-light processions towards the imposing basilica and the visible presence of so many seriously afflicted people create a
highly charged atmosphere.
There would be less room for argument if the cures were palpably ‘miraculous’, such as the sprouting of an amputated limb before one’s eyes, the shrinking in seconds of a gross hydrocephalus, or the instantaneous rectification of congenital spastic deformity. In practice nothing of that sort is claimed. Symptoms may improve dramatically, but evidence of sudden structural change I did not come across.
To be deemed miraculous by the Roman Catholic Church, a cure at Lourdes had to pass through three stages, documentation by the Medical Bureau, further scrutiny by an international medical committee and final ratification by a Canonical Commission. The criteria applied by the Commissions stipulated that the miraculous transformations should be instantaneous and complete, without medical treatment and without relapse. In reality, fulfilment of these criteria meant stretching or interpreting medical testimony in ways beyond reason. In 1956, when I was conducting the inquiry, Canonical Commissions had been in operation for eleven years, following a long wartime interruption. My review concentrated on the eleven cases that achieved acceptance by Commissions during this period.
Of these eleven cases, at least one, that of Mlle Clauzel, was most plausibly accounted for as swift relief of predominantly hysterical symptoms. Her doctors had sought examination by a psychiatric specialist, but the result is not given in the medical reports and the fact of the consultation was not referred to by the Commission. The official diagnosis, spinal arthritis, was confirmed by X-rays. However, this could by no means explain her numerous and variable complaints, that included muscle spasms, violent ‘girdle’ pains, urinary retention, vomiting, refusal of food, serious weight loss and long-standing confinement to bed, for which no medical cause was identified despite neurological examinations, appendectomy and other surgical interventions. Unexplained periods of temporary relief from her six years of illness had occurred prior to the ‘miracle’ that took place, not in Lourdes, but in Oran, Algeria, She had insisted on being carried by stretcher to attend a special mass at her local church where prayers were being offered on her behalf on her birthday. After the mass, to everyone’s amazement, she stood up and walked and, after being taken home, began eating without trouble. Her strength returned rapidly.
Mlle Clauzel was deeply religious, President of the “Society of Friends of Our Lady of Lourdes” in Oran, but she had not sought help for herself, explaining that “so many other favours seemed to me more necessary than my cure, that I preferred to ask for anything else but my own recovery”. A year after her cure she volunteered as one of the bearers of a heavy processional statue of the Virgin. The Commission noted that the X ray signs of spinal arthritis, to which experts had attributed her symptoms, remained unchanged, but this they considered added to the ‘miracle’! They noted also the fact that the cure was granted to someone of exemplary faith.
This was one of the less impressive ‘miracles’, but all eleven were bedevilled by problems of uncertain diagnosis, an absence of relevant medical information, and sometimes conflicting opinions. In published versions of the cures, and in the declarations of the Commissions, there was a noticeable tendency to gloss over points that did not favour a miraculous interpretation. Surprisingly, considering the enormous number of solicitations, including intercessions from a distance as well as pilgrimages to Lourdes, only one of the eleven miracles, that of Rose Martin, was a purported cancer cure, but here too the precise diagnosis was in doubt.
In February 1946 Mme Martin had a radical hysterectomy following some months of vaginal bleeding during sexual intercourse. Pathological analysis confirmed adeno-carcinoma of the cervix. A few days later the surgical wound broke open and an abdominal hernia and associated fistula developed, which was operated on eight months later. After a further six months she complained of bowel pain and extreme constipation requiring repeated enemas. A large swelling could be felt on rectal examination. Over the ensuing year her condition worsened and she was given substantial doses of morphine, but no other treatment is recorded. Amazingly, no biopsy was attempted. Apparently, she was given up as a hopeless case of secondary cancer. The swelling increased and she was very ill when taken to Lourdes on 30 June 1947. On the way to Lourdes she was constantly demanding morphine. Thinking she was perhaps exaggerating, the nurse, on doctor’s advice, substituted an injection of Lourdes water and camphor. The patient then passed a large quantity of infected stools and did not ask for more morphine. On 3 July, after three immersions in the water, she felt better, passed stools normally and returned home to Nice.
Some days after her return, when she had a hospital examination, there was no swelling or pain. The following year rectal examination and X-rays detected no abnormality. A vaginal discharge that she had previously suffered from also cleared up, she had regained lost weight and was considered fit, although it took time for her craving for morphine to come under control. The Canonical Commission, having heard from her doctors that her condition was not proved to be “intrinsically cancerous” decided to pronounce the case as a miraculous cure of a person who certainly had had cancer and as a result had been at the very gates of death. Arguably, her illness could well have been due to infective processes resulting from surgery. She might also have had severe, chronic constipation with impacted faeces due to her long-continued morphine consumption. Relief could have been precipitated by the sudden withdrawal of her medication during the journey to Lourdes. In any event, the cure was not necessarily inexplicable.
It would be tedious to reproduce summaries of all eleven cases, full details of which are in my book (Eleven Lourdes Miracles, 1957, London, Duckworth). One more must suffice: the case of Colonel Pellegrin. The patient had had an abscess on the liver surgically drained, but the opening continued to discharge. The nature of the infection was never decided, although TB or a parasitic infection was suspected and he had been treated with streptomycin. A fluctuating discharge continued for some fifteen months when he decided to visit Lourdes and took two immersions. After the second bathing, when his wife changed his dressing, she noticed the discharge had stopped. On return home his doctor found the opening healed over and the patient well. Initially the doctor reported that his examination was a month after the Lourdes visit, but subsequently said this was a mistake and that it was only a few days later. That a closure and healing took place is unremarkable. Interest centres on the coincidence in time with the immersion and the rapidity of the healing, but as to the latter the evidence is uncertain. When I tried to obtain additional information his doctor informed me that the Colonel did not like people concerning themselves with the matter.
It is sad that of all eleven ‘miracles’ the seemingly most remarkable one had the least medical confirmation. The account comes from the Mother Abbess of the convent in Rennes, where Sister Marie Marguerite was suddenly cured, at the age of sixty-five, in 1937, of an illness of some thirteen years duration. She had swollen, ulcerated legs and the slightest effort brought on ‘cardiac attacks’. Her state became so bad she was obliged to stay sitting up night and day. She ‘submitted’ to intercessional prayers ordered by the Abbess, at the same time requesting that all treatment should cease and some Lourdes water be obtained, so that any intervention by the Holy Virgin would be better appreciated. While witnessing the prayers she felt suddenly better, her bandages fell off and she was able to stand. Seen by the convent doctor the next day, she was walking normally and her legs were healed and no longer swollen. Examined eight years later, in 1945, by three doctors, she was declared to be in good health and free from any symptoms.
In contrast to the other ten cases, there are no medical particulars available to explain the nature of her illness and no information as to when she was last medically examined before the sudden cure. The convent doctor did not submit a medical report until seven years later, ostensibly because of the disruption of war, although the cure took place nearly three years before the war began. His information includes no X-rays or physical tests or even any convincing signs t
o support his diagnosis of “abscess on the left kidney”. The cure is certainly unexplained, but as much from lack of reliable information as for evidence of a miracle.
Undoubtedly some of the eleven cases were in grave condition at the time of their Lourdes visits and their recoveries were unexpected, but the evidence comes nowhere near proof of a paranormal event. In the standard scientific method of testing the efficacy of a curative influence, the double-blind trial, patients are selected at random from a sample of comparable cases, half of them left untreated. This would be extremely difficult to apply to Lourdes cases. A Lourdes study sample would need to be impossibly large, since it is only a tiny minority who are expected to experience anything like a miracle. Even so, a modern follow-up of claims for remarkable Lourdes cures identified after the event would not be without interest, since one would hope that more precise clinical diagnoses and more objective assessments would be available. However, if the aim were to test ordinary faith-healers, who reportedly produce measureable benefits for a significant proportion of their clients, scientific protocols would be easier to devise and would yield results relatively swiftly. Unfortunately, in practice, such research is difficult to arrange. Many doctors are reluctant to become involved, research funds for unorthodox projects are hard to obtain, and full co-operation from healers involves risk to their livelihood in the event of negative outcomes that would be detrimental to their livelihood.
An Infamous Project
The years spent at Marlborough clinic enabled me to collect information for the book Homosexuality (1955), published once again through the good offices of Lord Horder, who negotiated a simultaneous issue in Penguin paperback. The work was in proof at the time of the Wolfenden Committee deliberations on the law concerning homosexuality and prostitution – a combination of topics thought suitable by the authorities at the time – and I was told it was given to them. Whether it had any influence on their decision to recommend the decriminalisation of consenting homosexual activity between adult male couples in privacy I do not know. There was only one other book of factual information for the general public readily available at the time, Society and the Homosexual (1952) by Gordon Westwood, a pseudonym for the sociologist, Michael Schofield, who gave evidence to the Committee.