152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of seeking the cause of disease in Satanic influence and its cure 

 in fetichism. 



Yet Luther, with his sturdy common sense, broke away from 

 one belief which has interfered with the evolution of medicine 

 from the dawn of Christianity until now. When that troublesome 

 declaimer, Carlstadt, declared that " whoso falls sick shall use no 

 physic, but commit his case to God, praying that His will be 

 done," Luther asked, " Do you eat when you are hungry ? " and 

 the answer being in the affirmative, he continued, " Even so you 

 may use physic, which is God's gift just as meat and drink is, or 

 whatever else we use for the preservation of life." * 



But perhaps the best-known development of this theological 

 view in the Protestant Church was that mainly evolved in Eng- 

 land out of a French germ of theological thought a belief in the 

 efficacy of the royal touch in sundry diseases, especially epilepsy 

 and scrofula, the latter being consequently known as the king's 

 evil. This mode of cure began, so far as history throws light 

 upon it, with Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, and 

 came down from reign to reign, passing from the Catholic saint 

 to Protestant debauchees upon the English throne, with ever- 

 increasing miraculous efficacy. 



Testimony to the reality of these cures is overwhelming. As 

 a simple matter of fact, there are no miracles of healing in the 

 history of the human race more thoroughly attested than those 

 wrought by the touch of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, the Stuarts, 

 and especially by that chosen vessel, Charles II. Though Eliza- 

 beth could not bring herself fully to believe in the reality of these 

 cures, Dr. Tooker, the Queen's chaplain, and later Dean of Lich- 

 field, testifies fully of his own knowledge to the cures wrought by 

 her, though he confesses that she was somewhat skeptical. Will- 

 iam Clowes, the Queen's surgeon, also testifies fully to them. 

 Fuller, in his Church History, gives an account of a Roman Cath- 

 olic who was thus cured by the Queen's touch and converted to 

 Protestantism. Similar testimony exists as to cures wrought by 

 James I. Charles I also enjoyed the same power, in spite of the 

 public declaration against its reality by Parliament. In one case 

 the King saw a patient in the crowd, too far off to be touched, and 

 simply said, " God bless thee and grant thee thy desire " ; where- 

 upon, it is asserted, the blotches and humors disappeared from 

 the patient's body and appeared in the bottle of medicine which 

 he held in his hand ; at least so says Dr. John Nicholas, Warden 

 of Winchester College, who declares this of his own knowledge 

 to be every word of it true. 



* For Luther'a belief and his answer to Carlstadt, see his Table Talk, especially in Ilaz- 

 litt's edition, pp. 250-257 ; also in his letters passim. For recent " faith cures," see Dr. 

 Uuckley's article on Faith Healing and Kindred Phenomena in The Century, 1886. 



