The King’s Touch for Scrofula 
BY 
J. S. Billings, M.D. 
REPRINTED FROM THE PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE CHAR AKA CEUB, VOEUMB II. THE KING’S TOUCH FOR SCROFULA The King’s Touch for Scrofula. 
J. S. Billings, M.D. 
For a period of between five and six hundred 
years, extending from the twelfth to the eighteenth 
century, there existed in England and France a very 
general belief in the power of their respective sover- 
eigns to cure the disease known as the scrofula by 
touching persons affected with it—and hence, appar- 
ently, the disease came to be called the king’s evil. 
The name “ Morbus Regius,” or Royal disease, 
was applied to jaundice in the days of Celsus, who 
entitles the twenty-fourth chapter of his third book 
“ de regio morbo ” and says that it has received this 
name because it should be treated (among other things) 
“ lecto etiam, ct conclavi cultiore, lusu, joco, ludis, las- 
civia per quce mens exhilareturwhile Pliny quotes 
Varro as saying that it is called the Royal disease 
because its cure is effected with honied wine. The 
kings of Hungary were supposed to have the power to 
cure jaundice, but there are no definite records of their 
having done so. 
We have abundance of data with regard to the 
ceremony of touching for the evil both in England and 
France. The chief authority for the English part of 
the history is the “ Charisma Basilicon ” of John Browne, 
the King’s Surgeon, published in 1684; and for the THE KING’S TOUCH 
59 
French part the “ de mirabili strumas sanandi vi Solis 
Gallia regibus . . . concessa,” by Andre Laurens, 
chief physician of Henry IV, published in 1.609. This 
last book is in two parts, the first having the title : De 
mirabili strumas vi solis Gallia Rcgibus christianissi- 
mus divinitus concessa; the other being a book on the 
nature of struma, its differences, causes, and cures by 
ordinary means. It contains a folded plate by P. Firens 
representing the ceremony of touching the scrofulous 
by the king ; some twenty patients have ranged them- 
selves on their knees in a semi-circle formed by the 
soldiers of the guard, while King Henry IV, in royal 
costume, has his right hand applied to the forehead of 
the patient, the head being steadied by the first physi- 
cian, and the King is pronouncing these words : “ Jcte 
touche et Dieu te guerit.” 
The custom of touching in France is said to have 
been begun with Clovis, the first Christian king, about 
500 a.d. According to the chronicle of Forcadet, 
Clovis was intimate with, and very friendly to a certain 
man named Lanicet. Lanicet was affected with scrof- 
ula, having enlarged tumefied glands surrounding the 
neck. He had several times tried different remedies, 
even to the red-hot iron, and despairing of cure, he hid 
himself and would not endure the shame of showing his 
deformity. About this time it came to King Clovis in 
a dream that he had touched softly the throat of Lani- 
cet, and that suddenly his chamber was filled with a 
celestial flame, and that in the same place Lanicet 
became cured so that there was not even any appear- 
ance of a scar. The king, with great joy and hope for 
the life of his friend, arose as soon as it was daylight, 
and having prayed to God, tried whether he could by 60 
THE CHARAKA CLUB 
merely touching, do away with the disease, which he 
did to the great satisfaction of all the attendants. About 
this time Clovis was anointed and touched with the 
sacred oil by the Archbishop of Reims ; this sacred oil, 
it was said, was brought from heaven by a dove, and 
this virtue of curing the scrofula passed from Clovis, 
the first Christian king, to all his successors who were 
kings, of whatever race. 
There is evidence that Louis le Gros (1108-1137), 
more than a century before his saintly namesake, 
touched for the distemper, as vouched by Guilbert of 
Nogent, who died in 1124. 
All the kings of France from Louis IX to Louis 
XIII made a pilgrimage to Corbeny before they at- 
tempted to touch anyone for the malady. It was cus- 
tomary after consecration at the cathedral to go on a 
pilgrimage to the abbey of Corbeny, where the king 
was met by the monks bearing the head of St. Marcoul. 
This they placed in the hands of the king, who 
carried it to the church and placed it on the high 
altar. Next day the king touched the scrofulous can- 
didates. 
Louis XI (1461-1483) was deprived of the prerog- 
ative-for his evil living. There is a story told of the 
king that after he had an attack of apoplexy he sent for 
St. Francis of Paula, who was very celebrated for his 
miraculous cures, but who suffered himself from scrofula. 
They made a bargain that St. Francis should cure the 
king of his apoplexy and the king should touch St. 
Francis for the scrofula. But it turned out that neither 
could the saint cure the king nor the king the saint. 
After Louis XIV the pilgrimage to Corbeny was 
discontinued and the relics of St. Marcoul were brought THE KING’S TOUCH 
61 
to the king from the abbey. The practice was con- 
tinued in France up to 1775.* 
Gabriel Fallope regards as an old woman’s story 
this faculty attributed to the kings of France, but he 
believes, notwithstanding, that the patients who sub- 
mitted to the touch were benefited, and some of them 
even cured, through the fact that they had taken exer- 
cise and that.their travels were salutary, that they had 
received one or two crowns to get back to their coun- 
try, and so on. 
Also Guillaume Du Val, doctor of the Faculty of 
Medicine of Paris, 1640-41, has written a volume 
defending this famous gift of the kings of France. He 
also tells us that the consecrated kings of France cured 
epilepsy in those who would pronounce their names ; 
and that by invoking St. Loup, bishop of Gueret, con- 
vulsions in infants were cured. As to Saint Hubert, 
he not only had the power of curing hydrophobia in 
those who called upon him, but the patron of hunters 
had conferred this gift to all his descendants, and he 
adds, also, that Louis du Quesnay, lord of Varennes, 
had with his brother and with his sisters the ineffable 
happiness in having Saint Hubert for their ancestor, 
and the said Du Quesnay enjoyed the privilege of cur- 
ing people bitten by mad dogs. How? Simply in 
initiating them with pious ceremonies, calling upon he 
great Saint Hubert, and in applying upon their wounds 
a remedy composed of bread, salt and he'rbs.f 
The author of the chronicle, having settled to his 
satisfaction that the king really did cure scrofula by 
* Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, Philadelphia, 1884, p. 306. 
tG. Du Val, Historia Monogramma, sive pictura linearis sanctorum 
medicorum, Paris, 1643. 62 
THE CHARAKA CLUB 
touching, discusses whether the effect was (i) by his. 
own royal prerogative, (2) by a special virtue peculiar 
to the race of kings, (3) by the touchings, (4) by the 
words which he spoke, (5) by the power of his imagin- 
ation, or (6) by a power which came to him from God 
or the devil. 
The chronicle dates from 1621, and his conclusion 
is that it is a gift of God conferred hereditarily to suc- 
cessors.* 
The idea that kings have special powers of healing 
did not originate in the tenth century. Vespasian is 
said to have restored eyes to the blind and limbs to the 
lame. His exercise of this wonderful power is related 
by Suetonius and Tacitus. At first he pretended to 
slight and ridicule the request of the two poor men, 
who applied to him for relief, by the command (as they 
said) of the god Serapis. He continued some time 
distracted between fear and hope, and referred the case 
at last to physicians, who, whatever skill they had 
in their own faculty, appeared to have been accom- 
plished courtiers. The result of their consultation was 
an advice to Vespasian to try his hand, with an assur- 
ance that, be the event what it would, he would receive 
no disadvantage ; if he cured, he would reap all the 
glory; if he failed, the ridicule would befall the 
patients. 
It is pretended also that the Emperor Adrian 
cured blindness by the touch. But Spartian, who 
relates this, confesses at the same time that Marius 
* See De la vertu admirable de guerir les escrouelles, par le seul 
attouchement, etc. In Journal connaissances medicales, Paris, 1847, vol. 
xv, page 278. Also Diet, encyc. des sci. med. T. xxxii, Ecrouelles,. 
page 481. THE KING’S TOUCH 
63 
Maximus, an exact and celebrated historian, ascribes 
all to imposture. Haec per simultationem faeta. 
The traditions are that the first English king who 
had this power was Edward the Confessor (a.d. 1052), 
although there is no definite evidence on this point, for 
it is not mentioned by any writer until about eighty 
years afterward. Shakespeare uses the tradition in 
Macbeth, where Malcolm, at the Court of Edward the 
Confessor, speaks : 
[MACBETH. Act IV, Scene III.] 
Enter a Doctor. 
Mal. Well, more anon. Comes the King forth, I pray you? 
Doct. 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. 
Mal. I thank you, doctor. [Exit doctor.] 
Macd. What’s the disease he means ? 
Mal. ’Tis called 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 it is spoken, 
To the succeeding royalty he leaves 
The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, 
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy ; 
And sundry blessings hang about his throne, 
That speak him full of grace. 
William of Malmsbury, the first chronicler who 
speaks of the healing power of Edward the Confessor, 
writes as follows : 
“ Moreover, I shall now speak of miracles. A 
young married woman, but childless, was afflicted with 64 
THE CHARAKA CLUB 
swellings about her neck, and fell into bad health. 
Being commanded in her sleep to inquire for the bath- 
room of the king, she entered the palace, when the 
pious king, dipping his hands into the water and 
stroking her neck, soon restored her to a happy state 
of health ; the tumours that were filled with worms 
and corrupt blood bursting and disappearing. But as 
the sores left wide and disgusting cavities, he ordered 
her to be supported at the crown’s expense till per- 
fectly cured. Before the seventh morning a beautiful 
new skin appeared, so that no vestiges of the disease 
could be perceived. A year afterwards she had twins, 
which added greatly to the sanctity of Edward. It is 
said by those who knew him intimately, that he fre- 
quently cured this complaint in Normandy. Hence in 
our own days those assert falsely, when they say that 
the cure of this disease is not to be attributed to 
godliness, but to an hereditary royalty.”* 
It was generally acknowledged as a special power 
of the sovereign in the times of Henry II, whose 
chaplain about 1180 alludes to it as a well known fact. 
Queen Elizabeth appears to have for some time dis- 
continued the ceremony ; yet she did perform it, and 
there is a story of a Roman Catholic cured by her who 
declared that his experience had convinced him that 
the Pope’s excommunication against her had had no 
effect, 
King William refused to touch for the evil, saying : 
“ It is a silly superstition ; give the poor creatures 
* Willielmi Malmesburiensis de Gestis Regum Anglorum, lib. ii., p. 91, 
-edit. Francof. 1601, folio. Copied in Pettigrew, T. J., on superstitions 
connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery. Phila- 
delphia, 1844, p. 160. THE KING’S TOUCH 
65 
some money and send them away.” On one occasion, 
however, he was induced to lay his hand on a patient. 
“God give you better health,” he said, “and more 
sense.” Whiston, who tells this story, and who, 
Macaulay says, believed in everything but the Trinity, 
says the person was cured (Macaulay’s History of 
England, Vol. Ill, Chap. XIV, 1689). 
The last English sovereign who touched for the 
evil was Queen Anne, and it is said that on the last 
occasion Dr. Johnson, then a child four or five years 
old, was touched and received a touch piece. 
From The London Gazette, No. 4172, Monday, 
November 5, 1 705 : 
“ It being Her Majesty’s Royal Pleasure to Heal 
Weekly for the Evil during the present and succeeding 
Month till Christmas, and to begin on Wednesday the 
14th Instant, it is her Majesty’s Command, That all 
persons shall be viewed and Tickets delivered the day 
before, at the Office in Whitehall appointed for that 
purpose, and no where else ; and that all persons who 
apply shall bring a Certificate, signed and sealed by the 
Minister and Churchwardens of the Parish where they 
inhabit, that they never before received the Royal 
Touch.” 
George I discontinued the practice in 1714, but 
“the office for touching” remained in the prayer-book 
until 1719, and the Pretender touched the sick in the 
Paris hospitals, while his son in 1745 touched once 
in Edinburgh (Chambers’ History of the Rebellion). 
The practice of giving a gold or silver coin or medal 
called a touch-piece was introduced by Edward I. 
The Duke of Monmouth, claiming to be the right- 
ful sovereign, was charged, in his trial for high treason, 66 
THE CHARAKA CLUB 
with having exercised the functions of royalty by 
touching children for the king’s evil. 
Pepys, in his diary under date of April 13, 1661, 
says : “ I went to the banquet house and there saw the 
king (Charles II) heale, the first time that ever I saw 
him do it, which he did with great gravity, and it 
seemed to me to be an ugly office, and a simple one.” 
The number of persons touched was very great, 
numbering several hundreds a year in the time of 
Elizabeth, while the records show that over 90,00a 
were touched by Charles II. 
As Dr. Hussey* remarks, “ The healing power of 
the royal touch thus conferred was universally be- 
lieved, not only by the uneducated or the poor alone, 
but by the highest in the state and file best and most 
enlightened of those who lived during this long period ; 
and, among that number, by the physicians and sur- 
geons of the day, many of them possessing acquire- 
ments far in advance of the knowledge of their age— 
men who, as Bishop Douglas observes (Criterian, or 
Miracles Examined, ed. 1832, p. i2(p), ‘are not very 
ready in admitting that cures may be effected without 
making use of the medicines which they themselves 
prescribe/ ” 
Gilbertus Anglicus, a physician who lived about 
the time of Henry III and Edward I, is one of the 
earliest medical writers, whose work is known, who 
alludes to the exercise of the power in words which 
show the antiquity of the practice. He says scroful? 
is also called the king’s evil, because the kings have the 
power to cure it. (Compendium Medicinae, lib. iii.) 
* E. L. Hussey, “On the Cure of Scrofulous Diseases Attributed to 
the Royal Touch.” Archselogical Journal, No. 39. THE KING’S TOUCH 
67 
John of Gaddersden, a Fellow of Merton College, 
physician to Edward II, remarkable as being the first 
Englishman who was consulted at court as physician, 
advises recourse to the royal touch in desperate cases, 
as the kings have the power of curing it (Rosa Anglica, 
lib. ii. c. 1.). 
The disease known to English physicians from 
the twelfth to the eighteenth century as struma, or the 
king’s evil, while not definitely defined, and including 
some disorders which we should now distinguish from 
what we call scrofula, did nevertheless probably for the 
most part consist of cases of enlargement of the glands 
of the neck, such as are now considered to be due to 
tubercular adenitis. 
The ancient pathology declared that the strumous 
disease, or king’s evil, “ is a cold and moist praeternat- 
ural intemperiety, generated in the glandules from a 
subsaline and subacid juice, collated from the wheyish 
part of the blood, the which, whensoever it enters them, 
or approach their membranes, it doth both harden, 
concrete, incrassate and convert the same into a coagu- 
late caseous substance.” * 
Wiseman says the king’s evil is “ a tumor arising 
from a peculiar acidity of the serum of the blood, which, 
whensoever it lights upon glandule, muscle or membrane, 
it coagulates and hardens ; when it mixeth with marrow 
always dissolves it and rotteth the bone. If this acid 
humour be simple, the disease is a simple struma ; if 
joyned with a malignity, or any other humour, it makes 
a mixt tumour, as struma, maligna, phlegmonodcs, 
schirrodes, etc.” 
* Brown, J. Chaeradelogia, 1684, p. 12. 68 
THE CHARAKA CLUB 
Clowes, a man of high surgical reputation, surgeon 
to St. Bartholomew’s and Christ’s Hospitals, appointed 
to attend the forces by sea and land in the wars of 
Queen Elizabeth’s time, afterwards sworn Surgeon to 
the Queen, and subsequently Serjeant-Surgeon to 
James I, describing the occasional malignity of scrofu- 
lous ulcers, says (p. 4) : “ These kinds do rather presage 
a divine and holy curation, which is most admirable to 
the world, that I have seen and known performed and 
done by the sacred and blessed hands of the Queen’s 
most Royal Majesty, whose happiness and felicity the 
Lord long continue.” After relating a cure by the 
Queen’s touch, he continues his observations : “ And 
here I do confidently affirm and steadfastly believe that 
(for the certain cure of this most miserable malady), 
when all arts and sciences do fail, her Highness is the 
only day-star, peerless and without comparison”; end- 
ing with a prayer “that she may forever reign over us 
(if it please the Lord God) even unto the end of the 
world, still to cure and heal many thousands more than 
ever she hath yet done.” (A right fruitful and ap- 
proved Treatise for the artificial cure of that malady 
called in Latin Struma, and in English the Evil, cured 
by Kings and Queens of England, 1602, p. 50). 
Fuller says, if any doubt the cures, they are re- 
mitted to their own eyes for farther confirmation. 
(Church History, Vol. I, a.d. 1061-1066). 
Wiseman, Chief Surgeon in Charles I’s army, and 
afterwards Serjeant Surgeon to Charles II, whose writ- 
ings are deservedly held in respect by surgeons at the 
present day, says : “ I myself have been a frequent eye- 
witness of many hundreds of cures performed by his 
Majesty’s touch alone, without any assistance of THE KING’S TOUCH 
69 
chirurgery ; and those, many of them, such as had tried 
out the endeavors of able chirurgeons before they came 
thither. It were endless to recite what I myself have 
seen, and what I have received acknowledgments of by 
letter, not only from the several parts of this nation, 
but also from Ireland, Scotland, Jersey and Garnsey.” 
(Treatises, book iv, c. i). 
Turner, a physician, in 1722, reports the case of a 
patient of his own, who, after defying his best endeav- 
ors at relief, was cured in a few days after being 
touched by Queen Anne ; and he adds, “ I pretend 
only to make good the assertion that such cures have 
been wrought.” Referring to the large numbers 
touched since the Restoration, he says : “ It may be 
objected that among a hundred thousand it would be 
very strange if divers should not afterwards recover. 
I answer, that if any of those have been attended 
with such circumstances that the alteration can not 
fairly be imputed to any other cause, it makes suffi- 
ciently for our position ; but instead of one we have 
many hundreds where the evidence is undeniable.” 
(The Art of Surgery, Vol. I, p. 158). 
As late as 1793, J. B. Thiers, author of the History 
of Superstition, says that these remarkable cures by the 
kings of France are incontestible in the fact that infants 
were entirely cured, so that imagination had no part in 
these remarkable cures. 
Some difficult problems arise in connection with 
the history of the Royal touch for scrofula. Was the 
whole thing a delusion, or were many cures really 
affected ? And if there were true cases, how were they 
brought about ? 
And how did it happen that the gift of healing in 70 
THE CHARAKA CLUB 
this way by the kings of France and England was 
limited to this disease ? 
The evidence that some cures were thus effected 
is as abundant and trustworthy as is that relating to 
any so-called miraculous cures or that relating to the 
efficacy of blood-letting, antimony and mercurials in 
acute febrile diseases as furnished by medical records 
prior to about 1850. And in saying this I wish to be 
understood as saying that it is evidence of no value 
whatever when all the circumstances are taken into 
consideration. No doubt some of those who were 
touched became better, or even may be said to have 
recovered. Wiseman’s argument is the strongest one 
as to the connection of this result with the ceremony. 
He says : “ For since it cannot be denied that many go 
away cured, some will impute it only to the journey 
they take and the change of air; others to the effects 
of imagination ; and others to the wearing of gold 
(Metallotherapy ?). The first of these is easily con- 
futed by the hundreds of instances that are to be given 
of inhabitants of this city, who certainly could meet 
with little change of air, or indeed of exercise, in a 
journey to Whitehall. The second is as readily taken 
off by the examples of infants, who have been fre- 
quently healed.” 
The hypothesis has been advanced that scrofula 
took the-place of leprosy as a disease specially under 
the control of priestly medicine when leprosy disap- 
peared from Central Europe, and thus came to be the 
disease which was to bear evidence of the truth of the 
priestly claims of the kings of France and England. I 
have not, however, found any evidence that these 
kings were ever supposed to have any special powers THE KING’S TOUCH 
71 
for the healing of leprosy ; and the choice of struma or 
scrofula as the special disease to be healed by royal 
touch appears to have been at first largely a matter of 
accident. If to-day we were to select a disease to be 
treated in this manner, we should probably choose 
certain forms of hysteria and epilepsy such as were in 
ancient times supposed to be cases of demoniacal 
possession, and not any form of disease which we 
supposed to be due to micro-organisms. Yet it is well 
to bear in mind that, while we should act in accordance 
with what seems to us to be most probable, we have to 
deal with probabilities and not with certainties. It is 
a conceivable hypothesis that the cortical gray centres 
of perception and idention may so act upon the vaso- 
motor centres as through them to produce changes in 
function in glandular and other tissues, and thus to 
change the composition of albumoses and animal alka- 
loids contained in the fluids of the body; and, in fact, 
we have some evidence that this does sometimes occur. 
But, if this be possible, it is then also quite possible 
that by such changes the environment of living tissue 
may be made either more or less favorable to the 
development of certain micro-organisms, or that toxic 
products may be thus either neutralized or increased, 
with corresponding effects as regards immunity or 
progress of disease.