The story told by William of Malmesbury about Edward the Confessor is that “a young woman that had a husband about the same age as herself, but no child, was afflicted with overflowing of humours in her neck, which broke out in great nobbs, was commanded in a dream to apply to the King to wash it. To court she goes, and the King being at his Devotions all alone dip’d his fingers in water and dabbel’d the woman’s neck, and he had no sooner taken away his hand than she found herself better.” William goes on to tell that within a week she was well, and that within a year she was brought to bed of twins. Modern doctors have forgotten and despised the strange story of this royal touch, but two and three centuries ago they very seriously discussed it. Reports of marvellous and numerous cures were confidently related, and the writers who had no faith in the virtue of the performance admitted the genuineness of many of the cases. Sergeant-Surgeon Dickens, Queen Anne’s surgeon, narrated the most curious instance. At the request of one young woman he brought her to the Queen to be touched. After the performance he impressed upon her the importance of never parting with the gold medal which was given to all patients; for it appears that he had reason to expect that she was likely to sell it. She promised always to retain it, and in due course she was cured. In time, thinking all risk had passed, she disposed of the touch-piece; the disease returned; she confessed her fault penitently to Dr. Dickens, and by his aid was touched again, and once more cured. Surgeon Wiseman, chief surgeon in Charles I’s army, and afterwards Sergeant-Surgeon in Charles II’s household, described the cures effected by that monarch. He had been an eye-witness of hundreds of cures, he says. Many other testimonies of the same kind might be quoted, but it is as well to remark that a habit grew up of describing the touching itself as a cure. Careful and intelligent inquiries into the alleged success of the practice by investigators who were by no means believers in any actual royal virtue, but who yet admitted unhesitatingly the reality of many of the claimed cures, are on record. Among treatises of this character may be mentioned “A Free and Impartial Inquiry into the Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King’s Evil,” by William Beckett, F.R.S., a well known surgeon, 1722, and “Criterion, or Miracles Examined,” by Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, 1754. Both of these writers admit that cures did result from the King’s touch; the Bishop says that he personally knew a man who had been healed. Mr. Beckett deals with these cures with much judgment. He points out how likely it was that the excitement of the visit to the court, both in anticipation and in realisation, and the impressive ceremony there conducted, would in many instances so affect the constitution, causing the blood to course through the veins more quickly, as to effect a cure.