414 CURE BY Y E TOUCH. 



successors.' And as though this testimony were not enough, 

 the same author, in another place, writes, ' That Edward the 

 Confessor cured the king's evil is beyond dispute. The first 

 person cured by the king was a young woman ; the manner 

 was by stroking the affected place with his hand.' 



I desire to be impartial as touching the ability of British 

 kings and queens to cure by imposition of royal hands and 

 gentle smoothing down (not to be confounded with friction). 

 That allegation rests, I say, 011 the testimony of so many 

 bishops, clergymen, physicians, surgeons, nay, even people 

 averse to kingly authority either in the abstract or other- 

 wise, e.g. Roman Catholics, Quakers, and other Nonconfor- 

 mists, that to doubt its reality would not be easy. 



How, for example, shall we dispose of the testimony of 

 John Brown, chirurgeon in ordinary to his Majesty Charles 

 II., surgeon to St. Thomas's Hospital, and author of many 

 learned works on surgery and anatomy ? An inkling of that 

 testimony one gets in the title-page of his book, ' Charisma 

 Basilicon, or the Royal Gift of Healing Strumaes, or King's 

 Evil, by contact or imposition of the sacred hands of our 

 Kings of England and of France, given them on their inau- 

 guration. The whole concluded with above 60 admirable 

 cures, performed with and without gold, by his Majesty's bene- 

 diction, by his late Majesty's precious blood, and the like.' 



The c Charisma Basilicon' is dedicated to the Right 

 Honourable and Right Reverend Father in God, Nathaniel 

 Lord Bishop of Durham, and Clerk of the Closet to his Ma- 

 jesty. Chirurgeon Brown, addressing the bishop in a dedica- 

 tion, commits himself to an opinion of speculative physiology : 



* Whosoever considers,' writes he, ' the daily blessings our 

 three kingdoms do receive from his sacred Majesty p. e. 

 Charles II.], must necessarily be convinced that, as the 

 animal faculties lodge in his royal head, which gives that 

 sense to every affair we prosecute, so his sacred hands are 

 sweetened with that sacred salutiferous gift of healing, which 



