SINCE 1858, people have made pilgrimages to a shrine at Lourdes in the hope its healing waters would work miracles on their ailing bodies.

Over the years more than 7,000 folk have claimed to have been healed after a dip in or a sip of Lourdes water. Officially, 67 of these cures have been deemed miraculous.

But now, doctors in this area of southwestern France are refusing to diagnose miracles. Instead, they are using the term ‘remarkable’.

Surely remarkable is when a new hairstyle makes your next door neighbour look a few years younger, or when family members bear more than a passing resemblance?

Remarkable is when a bloke finally remembers to put the toilet seat down – not when someone arrives somewhere half-dead on a stretcher and leaves on two feet. It’s just another example of how science is slowly squeezing faith out of our lives.

Was there a similar announcement among our loin-clothed ancestors, declaring that thunder wasn’t actually a sky god having a temper tantrum but a sudden change in atmospheric pressure and temperature?

The ancient Egyptians believed in a sun god called Ra who travelled across the sky in a boat, and entered the underworld during nightfall.

What happened when the truth was discovered about night and day? If tabloid newspapers existed at the time, one can only imagine the headlines: “Sun-god admits: I am a fraud”, or “Planet Earth in shock-horror turning probe!”

I dread to think about Ganesha the Hindu god. I wonder if anyone has taken anyone to a quiet corner saying something with the body of a human and the head of an elephant is unlikely to be encountered on the high street?

Certainly in the western world, over time, scientific explanation has swallowed up our belief in such supernatural spirits. An example of our dwindling faith is shown in the falling ratio of cures to sick pilgrims to Lourdes over the years. Before 1914, one in 100 disabled people claimed to be well again.

From 1914 to 1928 it was one in 700, while the following 20 years produced just one in 1600.

As we make progress in medical knowledge, the medically inexplicable arena grows ever smaller. True, it is fantastic how medicine has come forward in leaps and bounds to cure our bodies, but what about our souls? Do these not need enrichment, too?

I’m not necessarily talking about believing that Christ died on a cross for our sins, nor religiously following the teachings of the Dalai Lama, but many find comfort in believing there are greater forces at work in their lives which can’t be explained.

This may be simply getting introduced to an influential person at a turning point in your life, or feeling a family member is looking down on you.

Little wonder interest in such areas as New Age spirituality, alternative therapies, Eastern religions, ghosts, even witchcraft is growing.

You only have to look in bookshops to see the shelves heavy under the weight of subjects which are now filling the voids in our psyches.

Of course, some areas could be considered a load of old bunkum, perhaps dwelling on the vulnerability of others. And many ‘miraculous’ occurrences do have a logical explanation.

But let us not dismiss the power of the mind. If people BELIEVE they will be cured then surely they are more likely to do so.

And even if the miracles of Lourdes were all down to sheer belief or faith, does it make them any less miraculous? I fear that now doctors have refused to acknowledge that “miracles” exist, we will see even fewer of them.