i 54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to the extreme of skepticism, to deny our senses and be incredu- 

 lous even to ridiculousness." Testimony to the reality of these 

 cures is indeed overwhelming, and a multitude of most sober 

 scholars, divines, and doctors of medicine declared the evidence 

 absolutely convincing. That the Church of England accepted 

 the doctrine of the royal touch is witnessed by the special 

 service provided in the Prayer-Book of that period for occasions 

 when the King exercised this gift. The ceremony was conducted 

 with great solemnity and pomp ; during the reading of the service 

 and at the laying on of the King's hands, the attendant bishop or 

 priest recited the words, " They shall lay their hands on the sick 

 and they shall recover " ; afterward came special prayers, the 

 Epistle and Gospel, with the blessing, and finally his Majesty 

 washed his royal hands in golden vessels which high noblemen 

 held for him. 



In France, too, the royal touch continued, with similar testi- 

 mony to its efficacy. On a certain Easter Sunday, that pious 

 king, Louis XIV, touched about sixteen hundred persons at Ver- 

 sailles. 



This curative power was then acknowledged far and wide, 

 by Catholics and Protestants alike, upon the Continent, in Great 

 Britain, and in America ; and it descended not only in spite of 

 the transition of the English kings from Catholicism to Protest- 

 antism, but in spite of the transition from the legitimate sov- 

 ereignty of the Stuarts to the illegitimate succession of the house 

 of Orange. And yet, within a few years after the whole world 

 held this belief it was dead ; it had shriveled away in the in- 

 creasing scientific light at the beginning of the eighteenth cent- 

 ury.* 



We may now take up more in detail the evolution of medi- 

 cal science out of the mediaeval view and its modern survivals. 

 All through the middle ages, as we have seen, some few laymen 

 and ecclesiastics here and there, braving the edicts of the Church 

 and popular superstition, persisted in medical study and prac- 

 tice ; this was especially seen at the greater universities, which 

 had become somewhat emancipated from ecclesiastical control. 

 In the thirteenth century the University of Paris gave a strong 

 impulse to the teaching of medicine, and in that and the following 



* For the royal touch, see Becket, Free and Impartial Inquiry into the Antiquity and 

 Efficacy of Touching for the King's Evil, 1722, cited in Pettigrew, p. 14*7, and elsewhere. 

 Also, Scoffern, Science and Folk Lore, London, 1870, pp. 413 and following. Also, Adams, 

 The Healing Art, London, 1887, vol. ii ; and especially Lecky, Ilistory of European 

 Morals, vol. i, chapter on the Conversion of Rome ; also his Ilistory of England in the 

 Eighteenth Century, vol. i, chap. i. For curious details regarding the mode of conducting 

 the ceremony, sec Evelyn's Diary ; also, Lecky, as above. For the royal touch in France, 

 and for a claim to its possession in feudal times by certain noble families, see Rambaud, 

 Hist, de la Civ. Francaise, p. 375. 



