Catherine Latapie of Loubajac, six miles from Lourdes, had fallen from a tree two years earlier and ruptured the brachial plexus of her right arm, leaving the hand twisted and three fingers paralysed. On the night of February 28–March 1, 1858 — only seventeen days after Bernadette's first apparition at Massabielle — Catherine, in her ninth month of pregnancy, walked to the grotto with her two small children.
She prayed at the grotto and bathed her crippled hand in the new spring. Her arm and fingers were instantly restored to full function. She returned home in time to give birth to her son later that same day. The cure was investigated by Bishop Laurence of Tarbes during the canonical inquiry of 1858–62 and recognised on January 18, 1862 — one of the seven cures formally proclaimed by the bishop in his decree of authentication. It remains the first formally recognised Lourdes miracle.