The king's evil.

  • Crawfurd, Raymond Henry Payne, Sir, 1865-1938.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The king's evil. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    poor much more, than his Norman predecessors did. True to his character his chief foundations were on French soil. At Caen and Rouen he founded large lazar-houses. At his native Le Mans he built an extensive almshouse or hospital for the use of the sick and poor; at Angers he endowed a large hospice for the poor. Few if any did he found on English soil, and his bequests to English lazar-houses became effec- tive only at his death. Had he not given them the better gifts that Peter of Blois recites, ' the disappear- ance of bubonic plague and the cure of scrofula' ? Following hard on Peter of Blois comes Gilbertus Anglicus, whose birth Payne1 has assigned to the decade 1160-1170 a.d. The period of his study at Salerno would thus fall between 1180 and 1190 a.d. On leaving Salerno, there is reason to think that he joined Archbishop Hubert Walter, under Cceur de Lion, in the third Crusade. Dying about 1230 a.d., his life would have extended over part or all of the reigns of Henry II, Richard I, John, and Henry III. In the chapter ' De Scrofulis et Glandibus' of his Compendium Medicinae Gilbertus Anglicus writes that scrofula is called ' Morbus Regius, quia reges hunc morbum curant' [the King's Evil, because kings cure it]. Writers on the King's Evil have confidently adopted this passage as Gilbert's contribution to the historical continuity of the royal healing in England. But surely the eponym ' Anglicus', though indicating Anglo-Norman birth, suggests dis- tinctly that Gilbert lived and wrote away from the land of his birth. What need to call him ' Anglicus', had his repute been earned in England ? Still his use of the plural reges, unqualified by any limiting adjective, would seem to indicate kings of France and England, rather than successive kings of either nation. 1 Fitspatrick Lectures.