Catherine of Sienna, which in their turn wrought many cures until
they too became out of date and yielded to other saints. Just so in
modern times the healing miracles of La Salette have lost prestige
in some measure, and those of Lourdes have come into fashion.[[42]]
Even such serious matters as fractures, calculi, and difficult
parturition, in which modern science has achieved some of its
greatest triumphs, were then dealt with by relics; and to this hour
the _ex votos_ hanging at such shrines as those of St. Genevieve at
Paris, of St. Antony at Padua, of the Druid image at Chartres, of
the Virgin at Einsiedeln and Lourdes, of the fountain at La Salette,
are survivals of this same conception of disease and its cure.
So, too, with a multitude of sacred pools, streams, and spots
of earth. In Ireland, hardly a parish has not had one such
sacred centre; in England and Scotland there have been many; and
as late as 1805 the eminent Dr. Milner, of the Roman Catholic
Church, gave a careful and earnest account of a miraculous cure
wrought at a sacred well in Flintshire.
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