Cramp Rings.--Scarcely less famous than the king's touch for nutritional and neurotic conditions were the "cramp rings," which were blessed by the Queens of England and were supposed to cure all sorts of cramps. The power attached to them for this form of ailment was similar to that which the king's touch had for scrofula or the king's evil. Cramps seemed to be the "queen's evil." Whenever a queen died there was a great demand for these rings, because no more could be obtained until a new queen was crowned. The efficiency of these and the cures which they performed can be readily understood. Many of the hysterical conditions within the abdomen are cramplike in character. Hysteria will imitate nearly every form of cramp, including even those due to gallstone and kidney calculus. Any strong mental influence will do more for hysterical pain than our strongest medicines. On the other hand, many of the cramplike conditions within the abdomen may be relieved by concentration of mind on some distracting thought, and feelings of discomfort in the intestines may thus be relieved. {81} Mental Healers.--When the king was absent from England during Cromwell's time, the touching for the king's evil was sadly missed. If Cromwell himself had announced that he would touch for the diseases that used to come to the king, a number of cures would undoubtedly have been reported. As it was, Greatrakes, the Irish soldier adventurer, dreamt that he was commissioned from on high to touch for the same diseases as formerly had gone to the king, and, having begun it, cures followed until probably many more came to him every year than usually went to the sovereign in the olden times. He worked at least as great a proportion of cures. Greatrakes had many imitators, some of them doubtless quite sincere, but they were people of more or less deranged intellect, the kind who easily get the idea that they are commissioned for some purpose that sets them above the common people. Indeed, the story of the mental healers is probably, more than anything else, a chapter in the history of insanity, and the power of those with delusions to lead others to share their delusions. This is not a slur upon human nature, and especially upon some of the inspirations and aspirations that lift it up to do great things, but a literal statement of the view of these phenomena that seems forced upon us by modern advances in the knowledge of the psychology of mental influence and of psychic contagion.