[164] J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, III, p. 241. [165] _Ibid._, p. 239. [166] _Ibid._, p. 240. CHAPTER IX ROYAL TOUCH "Men may die of imagination, So depe may impression be take."--CHAUCER. "When time shall once have laid his lenient hand on the passions and pursuits of the present moment, they too shall lose that imaginary value which heated fancy now bestows upon them."--BLAIR. "The king is but a man, as I am; the violet smells to him as it does to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions; his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing."--SHAKESPEARE. _Malcolm._ Comes the king forth, I pray you? _Doctor._ Ay, sir: there are a crew of wretched souls, That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art; but at his touch, Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, They presently amend. _Malcolm._ I thank you, doctor. [Exit _Doctor._ _Macduff._ What's the disease he means? _Malcolm._ 'Tis call'd the evil: A most miraculous work in this good king, Which often, since my here remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction.--_Macbeth_, Act iv, Sc. 3. Perhaps we have no better example of the effect of the belief in healers than that presented by what was known as "king's touch." It is typical of the cures performed by healers, and on that account I shall give a rather full account of the phenomenon. Touching by the sovereign for the amelioration of sundry diseases was a currently accepted therapeutic measure. The royal touch was especially efficacious in epilepsy and scrofula, the latter being consequently known as "king's-evil." So far as we are able to trace this practice in history, it began with Edward the Confessor in England and St. Louis in France. There has been not a little dispute concerning its real origin. "Laurentius, first physician to Henry IV, of France, who is indignant at the attempt made to derive its origin from Edward the Confessor, asserts the power to have commenced with Clovis I, A. D. 481, and says that Louis I, A. D. 814, added to the ceremonial of touching, the sign of the cross. Mezeray also says, that St. Louis, through humility, first added the sign of the cross in touching for the king's evil."[167] [Illustration: KING'S TOUCH-PIECES]