faith preponderate against his judgment; and, on the other hand, certain passages in his treatise necessarily shew a consciousness of collusion and fraudulent pretensions. It was his business, as Serjeant-surgeon, to select such afflicted objects as were proper to be presented for the Royal Touch. In the history of the disease, relating its various states and appearances, he says, 'Those which we present to his Majesty are chiefly such as have this kind of tumour about the _musculus mastoideus_, or neck, with whatever other circumstances they are accompanied; nor are we difficult in admitting the thick-chapped upper lips, and eyes affected with a _lippitudo;_ in other cases we give our judgment more warily.' Here is a selection of the slightest cases, and a manifest doubt expressed concerning the success in more inveterate ones. A little below, observing that the _strumæ_ will often be suppurated, or resolved unexpectedly from accidental ferments, he says, 'In case of the King's Touch, the resolution doth often happen where our endeavours have signified nothing; yea, the very _gummata;_ insomuch that I am cautious of predicting concerning them (though they appear never so bad) till 14 days be over.' From this we learn, that the Touch was by no means infallible, and that the pretence of its succeeding was not given up till a fortnight had passed without any change for the better. Indeed it appears very plain, that the worst kind of cases were seldom or never offered the Touch; for in no disease does Wiseman produce more observations from his practice of difficult and dangerous chirurgical treatment, and in not one of these did he call in the assistance of the Royal Hand. It was indeed proposed in a single instance, but under such circumstances as furnish a stronger proof of imposture than any thing hitherto related. A young gentlewoman had an obstinate scrophulous tumour in the right side of the neck, under the maxilla. Wiseman applied a large caustic to it, brought it to suppuration, treated it with escharotics, and cured it. 'About a year after,' he says, 'I saw her again in town, and felt a small gland, of the bigness of a lupin, lying lower on that side of the neck. I would have persuaded her to admit of a resolvent emplaster, and to be touched; but she did not, as she said, believe it to be the King's Evil.' Here, after allowing his patient to undergo a course of very severe surgery, he is willing to trust the relics of the disease to the Royal Touch, assisted by a resolving plaster; but the complaint was now too trifling to engage her attention. Surely the greatest opponent of the Touch will not place it in a more contemptible light!"