e 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]

William of Malmesbury gives the origin of the royal touch in his
account of the miracles of Edward the Confessor. "A young woman had
married a husband of her own age, but having no issue by the union,
the humours collecting abundantly about her neck, she had contracted a
sore disorder, the glands swelling in a dreadful manner. Admonished in
a dream to have the part affected washed by the king, she entered the
palace, and the king himself fulfilled this labour of love, by rubbing
the woman's neck with his fingers dipped in water. Joyous health
followed his healing hand; the lurid skin opened, so that worms flowed
out with the purulent matter, and the tumour subsided. But as the
orifice of the ulcers was large and unsightly, he commanded her to be
supported at the royal expense until she should be perfectly cured.
However, before a week had expired, a fair new skin returned, and hid
the scars so completely, that nothing of the original wound could be
discovered; and within a year becoming the mother of twins, she
increased the admiration of Edward's holiness. Those who knew him more
intima