148 the popular science monthly. 



at that time, says : " I myself have been a frequent eye-witness of 

 many hundred cures performed by his Majesty's touch alone, without 

 any assistance of chirurgery " ; still it does not appear that he sent his 

 patients to the King, and he gives his own method of curing scrofula 

 with great minuteness. This evidence as to the cures is apparently 

 most complete, and is that of men skilled in the medical art who were 

 eye-witnesses and assisted in the ceremonies. Of course now no one 

 believes that there was virtue in the royal touch any more than that 

 the philosopher's stone could convert baser metals into gold. If the 

 King could cure scrofula, how is it that during Charles II's reign scrof- 

 ula was more prevalent than for many years previously ? No doubt 

 it was because people neglected ordinary methods of treatment, in their 

 desire to be cured miraculously. 



The only way it is possible to explain the evidence of Browne and 

 Wiseman is that they were ardent royalists, and held the efficacy of 

 the royal touch to be as much a party tenet as the divine right of 

 kings, and that by doing so they pleased the court and so advanced 

 their own interests. Had they doubted it, they would have incurred 

 the suspicion of being disaffected to the government.* Failures of 

 cure were attributed, as in our own day, to want of faith, as one writer 

 puts it, " none ever failed of receiving benefit unless their little faith 

 and credulity starved their merits." 



Curing diseases by the laying on of hands was practiced with great 

 success by Valentine Creatraikes, an Irish gentleman of good family, 

 who served under Cromwell both in a military and civil capacity. At 

 the Restoration, being deprived of his offices, he undertook to cure the 

 king's-evil by touch, or stroking, as it was called ; he succeeded so 

 well in this that he extended the field of his labors and treated epi- 

 lepsy, asthma, convulsions, deafness, etc., by the same method. The 

 latter diseases being all clue to disorders of the nervous system, benefit 

 was no doubt frequently obtained through the effect of the imagina- 

 tion. " Imagination," says Lord Bacon, " is next akin to a miracle- 

 working faith." Greatraikes's fame soon spread, and he was sent for 

 from far and near ; the Earl of Orrery and Lord Conway patronized 

 him, and he even deceived the great Robert Boyle. At length he 

 arrived in London, where for some time he was most popular. The 

 majority of his admirers were ladies, and on the more hysterical of the 

 sex he performed marvelous cures. Soon, however, the tongues of 

 slander and ridicule assailed him, and he retired to his native country 

 and obscurity. Many others succeeded Greatraikes. John Everett, or 

 Leverett, the seventh son of a seventh son, and a gardener, practiced 



* One Thomas Rosewcll was actually tried for high treason in 108-1 for saying that 

 " people made a flocking to the King, upon pretense of being healed of the king's-evil, 

 which he could not do, but that they, being priests and prophets, could by their prayers 

 do as much." Iiosewell was tried by the celebrated Judge Jeffries and found guilty, but 

 afterward pardoned. (Wadd's " Mems and Maxims," p. 136.) 



