Marie Lebranchu, 35, of Paris, was dying of advanced bilateral pulmonary tuberculosis — fevers, weight loss to under 70 pounds, hemoptysis — when she boarded the Paris national pilgrimage train to Lourdes in August 1892. She arrived on a stretcher with the doctors anticipating her death at the sanctuary.
On August 20 she was bathed in the piscines. The cough, fever, and hemoptysis stopped immediately; she regained appetite and weight over the following weeks and lived to old age. Her case, together with that of Marie Lemarchand the next day, was witnessed by Émile Zola, who had come to Lourdes that summer to research his anti-Marian novel; he fictionalised her too (as 'Grivotte') and likewise kept her sick in the novel. The cure was formally recognised in 1908.