an examination of mineral-rich healing waters
At this point in our exploration of the global consequences of trace mineral depletion and heavy metal excess in our soils—and the warnings of visionary thinkers about the hazards this poses—it’s natural to ask: can restoring minerals tangibly improve health, beyond the theoretical?
While the evidence is still emerging, intriguing case studies and a growing body of preliminary research suggest that mineral-rich environments and therapies may hold considerable promise.
This chapter brings together clinical anecdotes, early studies, and compelling hypotheses.
Here, readers will encounter the fascinating frontier where scientific inquiry meets therapeutic possibility, setting the stage for later chapters on the unique biochemistry of volcanic-derived trace minerals.
Ethiopian Balneotherapy Study
The hot springs featured in the Ethiopian study above are geologically fed by volcanic rocks characteristic of the Main Ethiopian Rift region. Specifically, these springs are often surrounded by and interact with rhyolite lava domes, pyroclastic deposits (including ignimbrites), and basaltic lava flows—all products of extensive volcanic activity over the past 1-1.2 million years.
Researchers assessed the effects of balneotherapy (hot spring bathing) on musculoskeletal pain in 1,279 adult users of four hot springs in Southern Ethiopia. Participants, primarily with joint and muscle pain, were followed for at least three days of immersion.
After treatment, 83 percent reported complete pain relief, along with additional improvements in joint stiffness, swelling, and rheumatoid arthritis symptoms.
The study concluded that hot spring baths are a safe, low-cost, and effective supportive therapy for musculoskeletal disorders, including arthritis, and recommended integrating balneotherapy into routine care for those with chronic arthritic pain.
Balneotherapy in Rheumatic Diseases
A meta-analysis of 14 studies found that “spa therapy” had a favourable effect on pain, function, and quality of life in patients with Osteoarthritis, Fibromyalgia, and Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Systematic Review of Balneotherapy For Chronic Low Back Pain
The authors identified 16 studies with 1,656 participants and examined the effectiveness of hot spring hydrotherapy for chronic low back pain (CLBP). Results showed that hot spring hydrotherapy significantly reduced pain intensity and functional disability, as well as medication usage for CLBP.
The benefits were most pronounced for patients aged 60 and above.
The authors concluded that hot spring hydrotherapy is a promising complementary treatment for chronic low back pain, particularly in older adults, though, as always, “more research is needed for younger patients” and “to understand the underlying mechanisms.”
Did you catch that last sentence? “More research is needed to understand the underlying mechanisms.” This will become important when we get to the case histories that occurred at the Grotto Of Marabeille, at the Shrine in Lourdes, France.
Using AI, I discovered that, since 2010, at least 28 balneotherapy studies have been published in the peer-reviewed literature on a diverse set of symptoms and conditions (note many were systematic reviews which included various numbers of studies).
Balneotherapy studies and their outcomes… were all positive:
The “Unknown” Mechanisms of Healing Hot Springs
I found the above balneotherapy papers particularly compelling. The three reviews that I presented above led me to ask AI the following:
Q: Identify all locations of purported healing water mineral hot springs and then find any and all detailed accounts of healing from illness with dramatic or miraculous recoveries:
AI then provided specific examples of such springs and gave links to sites where accounts of clinical recoveries have been compiled, but only eight springs were listed. Suspicious that AI was holding back, I then asked:
Q: Can you reproduce the same list above but include all springs that you found in your search, not just the notable ones.
Brace yourself. What followed was a comprehensive list of 203 healing mineral hot springs worldwide, organized by region and spanning every continent:
Editor’s note – see the source document for the list
The list included both highly developed spa resorts and rustic, natural pools, all celebrated for their mineral content, traditional healing use, and sometimes for dramatic accounts of healing from illness.
Interesting, no? Hypothesis generating yes?.
Next, one of my newfound mineral expert colleagues suggested I “look deeper” into the accounts surrounding one particular site of “healing water.” So I did.
I then dug into data from, surprisingly, Catholic Church archives. History—and scripture—overflow with “healing water” stories, mostly in mineral and hot springs, where countless have claimed remarkable recoveries.
The History Of The Massabeille Spring at Lourdes
From February 11 to July 16, 1858, a young woman named Bernadette Soubirous reported 18 apparitions of what she felt was the Virgin Mary. On Mar 25, the Lady identified herself as the Immaculate Conception (a Catholic dogma defined in 1854).
Bernadette uncovered a spring after being told to “drink from the fountain,” and reports of recoveries soon followed.
After the investigation, the local bishop declared the apparitions worthy of belief. Pilgrims began to pour in, and the sanctuary began to take shape.
Today, Lourdes is one of the world’s largest Christian pilgrimage centers, welcoming millions yearly (more than the Taj Mahal), especially the sick, who bathe in or are blessed with the spring’s water.
The shrine’s identity blends prayer, service to the ill, and careful medical evaluation of recoveries—all centered on the grotto where Bernadette prayed.
Since 1858, over 7,000 healings have been reported, with 72 confirmed as official “miracles”—these latter accounts surviving intense medical and ecclesiastical scrutiny. Once no natural mechanism for healing is found, a cure is deemed “miraculous.”
Lourdes Grotto Geology
Know that the water at Lourdes flows from a natural spring through karstic limestone caves—the Mountain of Caves—creating a mineral-rich profile. Volcanic rock, including dark porphyry, adds complexity, with the area shaped by magma intrusions during the Pyrenees’ formation.
Volcanic rock is apparently part of the healing waters’ recipe.
The Miracles
Of 72 confirmed miracles, each has undergone rigorous medical investigation: cures are near-immediate, complete, lasting, and inexplicable. The “International Medical Committee of Lourdes” and a diocesan bishop verify each case.
For those hungry for specifics, both the website Miracle Hunter and the Lourdes Sanctuary site archive every case, which describes dramatic recoveries following immersion in, or consumption of, water from the grotto at Lourdes.
Interestingly, a handful show no water contact—fodder for future explorations into ”mind-body healing.”
Each tale shares familiar patterns: dire prognosis, sudden recovery at Lourdes, and long-term follow-up confirming lasting relief.
Signature Cases
- Catherine Latapie: Hand paralyzed and pregnant, she bathed in the spring and regained full motion, then delivered her child that evening.
- Louis Bouriette: Blinded in one eye, he repeatedly bathed it in the spring and regained his sight.
- Mrs. Blaisette Cazenave: Chronic eye disease, declared incurable, resolved after two applications of spring water.
- Henri Busquet: Tuberculosis-induced ulcer, cured overnight with spring water from Lourdes.
- Justin Bouhart: Chronically ill and failing to thrive, bathed as a last resort and recovered fully.
- Mrs. Madelaine Rizan: Nearly 20 years paralyzed, drank Lourdes water and her strength, mobility, and skin health returned.
- Marie Moreau: Severe vision loss, bandaged eyes with Lourdes water overnight and awoke healed.
- Joachime Dehant: Incurable leg ulcer, healed after baths at Lourdes.
- Elisa Seisson: Chronic bronchitis and heart disease, resolved after one bath.
- Sister Eugenia Marie Mabille: Longstanding abdominal infection, healed after visiting the Baths—her health remained excellent for decades.
Miracles or Minerals?
What got me started on this path was that, as I was reading through all the cases one particularly resonated with me. I got a “spidey sense” that some may have been the result of a striking “physiologic” response to immersion in uniquely mineralized spring water.
A hypothesis, mind you. In particular, the hypothesis was generated from the case of Sister Bernadette Moriau, the last official Lourdes miracle, confirmed in 2018.
As an experienced clinician, my intuition has been shaped by years of observing healing trajectories (the majority of which are in the severely and critically ill), some of them memorably striking (like IV vitamin C in sepsis).
In Sister Bernadette’s case, the recovery was clearly not “instant”—it took three days and was preceded by the onset of “excruciating burning pain.” I began to develop the sense of an activation of a profound immune (e.g., inflammatory) or repair response.
Knowing what I know now of the myriad biochemical impacts of minerals, I began to wonder if either some sort of dormant genes were being triggered, or a novel enzymatic function was being stimulated, or the sudden restoration of energy to damaged cells was occurring (the proton gradient, which you will learn about later).
If so, it sure seems to have led to a “supercharged” cellular and immune response, which initiated focused tissue healing. I know, maybe I was hallucinating, but I decided to pursue this hypothesis.
The first order of business was to determine whether the Grotto at Lourdes had a unique mineral content, which would not only help support my hypothesis but also provide insight into the “unknown mechanisms” of the recoveries reported in earlier volcano-spring balneotherapy studies.
Analyses Of The Water At Lourdes
Unfortunately, at first glance, I discovered that despite numerous analyses of Lourdes water—ranging from classic tests of major ions in 1858 to modern geochemical profiles—the official stance remains: Lourdes water is unexceptional.
However, using AI, I found a study in the Polish geochemical journal Annales Societatis Geologorum Poloniae. Published in 2017 (a year prior to the 72nd and last declared Miracle), the researchers, Dobrzyñski & Rossi—a Pole and an Italian—were the first in history to use ICP-MS to analyze water from the grotto.
They also analyzed water from three other springs in the region and compared their geochemical profiles.
First, their stated rationale for the study:
Geochemical studies of the waters from four springs, including the Massabielle (MS) Spring, were conducted at Lourdes (France) following a long, rainless, and warm period to document the groundwater chemistry affected by current meteoric input.
The existence of anecdotal reports of anomalously elevated concentrations of trace constituents in the water of the MS Spring, in the absence of any detailed studies, inspired these first geochemical investigations of trace elements in the spring waters at Lourdes.
Another section (paraphrased for brevity):
From its discovery in 1858, the Marabeille Spring’s water has drawn interest. Initial chemical analysis by Édouard Filhol in 1858 compared the spring’s composition to nearby mineral springs but found no significant differences.
In the early 20th century, hypotheses suggested that high radioactivity was a healing factor; tests by Albert Nodon (1915) and Adolphe Lepape (1938) found no such effect.
Additional claims from this era included potential enrichment in oxygen, ozone, penicillin, and bacteriophages—none were supported by tests. To date, no component explaining the water’s alleged healing effects has been scientifically confirmed
Here is where it gets weird. They then cite numerous “claims” from “popular science publications” and “health-oriented websites” that the healing properties of the MS water are due to an “extremely high concentration” of particular constituents, specifically germanium or hydrogen gas.
Why the focus on one trace mineral and/or hydrogen gas?
Here’s why:
“Germanium dissolved in water was proposed as an active and beneficial substance, following successful tests involving Ge-rich Dunaris mineral water (Eifel, Germany) in the treatment of cancer (Goldstein 1927, 1932).
Kazuhiko Asai (1981), the Japanese chemist (Ed: interesting), who espoused the beneficial role of germanium in human health, after analysing germanium in healing waters from well-known sites around the world, claimed that the amount of germanium in Lourdes water was far greater than that found in other waters.
This opinion, while not supported by any quantitative data on the germanium concentration in Lourdes water, began to take on a life of its own, restated by other authors, e.g., Loren (1987), and Wallach and Lan (1994).
They then state that their data “definitively invalidated” the hypothesis above because the germanium concentrations they measured in the MS water was “significantly lower” than in average fresh groundwater.
They end the paper by literally recommending that future studies be conducted to determine whether there is an increase in hydrogen gas content. Weird (but cool at the same time because they reveal themselves to believe that it is “something” in the water that must explain these healings, maybe it’s hydrogen gas, who knows?
However—hold on to your hats here folks—while they harped on germanium and hydrogen gas, the data presented in their own paper showed that Lourdes Marrabielle Spring water was “measurably enriched in lithium, sodium, cesium, barium, bromine, sulfur, fluorine, boron, antimony, bismuth, and rare earths compared to neighboring springs and even crustal standards.”
An “anomalous geochemical fingerprint shaped by deep, mineralized fluids migrating along tectonic faults”.
Are you kidding me? Although the paper was published with a “negative” conclusion that the water was unremarkable and does not explain a mechanism for the dramatic healings, the data presented showed an incredibly unique geochemical mineral content.
Why was the uniqueness of the mineral content of the Lourdes spring dismissed (or more accurately, not even hypothesized) as a possible medical explanation for the recoveries? Was it that the Pole and the Italian didn’t want to “rock the boat?”
That may explain their reluctance, but a better guess is that the peer-reviewed literature has not attributed any importance to, or revealed awareness of, the possibility that these “ignored” trace and rare earth elements have a biological impact (Ed: at the risk of stating the obvious, that is precisely the point of this book – to research this possibility further).
Given the lack of scientific research on many trace and rare earth minerals (let alone their combinations), the scientific consensus would instead conclude that their concentrations don’t reach known pharmacological thresholds, nor do they have established mechanisms of action for dramatically reversing disease.
But that’s my central contention: optimal pharmacological levels have never been established for most trace minerals, nor have their effects and mechanisms been adequately explored. Again, we have identified the function of only nine percent of the over 16,000 enzymes in the human body, let alone understood their myriad possible mineral cofactors.
In this “blind spot” of biomedical science, my hypothesis stands unrefuted (and untested, unfortunately—another point of this book, which is, again, to try to spur research into biological applications of trace and rare earth minerals).
So, you decide—minerals or miracles? You might want to let the Pope know (or at least the “Medical Committee of Lourdes,” so they can further investigate the “Kory Hypothesis.”
If I haven’t explained my fondness for naming medical findings after myself, please read this half-humorous post I once wrote, called the “Kory Scale.”
Anyway, I hope the “Committer” does this; otherwise, they risk erroneously declaring miracles every time a pilgrim experiences relief from a decades-long ailment after being exposed to uniquely enriched mineral water.
Do you agree, or am I completely off the rocker? Methinks not.
This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here pierrekorymedicalmusings.com
Header image: GeologyPage