The imposition of hands, for the purpose of performing miraculous cures, has been practised from time immemorial; Chaldees and Brahmins alike using it in cases of malignant diseases. The kings of England and of France, and even the counts of Hapsburg in Germany, have ever been reputed to be able to cure goîtres by the touch of their hands, and hence the complaint was called the "king's evil." The idea seems to have originated in the high north; King Olave, the saint, being reported by Snorre Sturleson as having performed the ceremony. From thence, no doubt, it was carried to England, where Edward the Confessor seems to have been the first to cure goîtres. In France each monarch upon ascending the throne received at the consecration the secret of the _modus operandi_ and the sacred formula--for here also the spoken word went hand in hand with the magic touch. Philip I. was the first and Charles I. the last monarch who performed the cure publicly, uttering the ancient phrase: "_Le roi te touche, Dieu te guérisse!_" In a somewhat similar manner the Saludadores and Ensalmadores of Spain cured, not goîtres and stammering only, as the monarchs we have mentioned, but almost all the ills to which human flesh is heir, by imposition of hands, fervent prayer and breathing upon the patient. Similar gifts are ascribed to Eastern potentates, and the ruling dynasty in Persia claims to have inherited the power of healing the sick from an early ancestor, the holy Sheik Sephy. The great traveler Chardin saw patients hardly able to crawl dragging themselves to the feet of the Shah, and beseeching him only to dip the end of his finger into a bowl of water, and thus to bestow upon it healing power. It will excite little wonder to learn that those remarkable men who succeeded by the fire of their eloquence and the power of contagious enthusiasm to array one world in arms against another, the authors of the Crusades, should have been able to perform miraculous cures. Peter of Amiens and Bernard of Clairvaux obtained such a hold on the minds of faithful believers, that their curse produced spasms and fearful sufferings in the guilty, while their blessing restored speech to the dumb, and health to the sick. Here also special power was attributed even to their clothes, and many remarkable results were obtained by the mere touch. Spain, the home of fervent ascetic faith, abounds in saints who performed miracles, the most successful of whom was probably Raimundus Normatus (so called because not born of woman, but cut from his dead mother's body by skillful physicians), who cured, during the plague of 1200, great numbers of men by the sign of the cross. To this class of men belong also, as mentioned before, the early fathers of the Society of Jesus, though their powers were as different as their characters. Ignatius Loyola, who represented the intelligence of the new order, performed few miraculous cures; Xavier, on the contrary, the man of brilliant fancy,