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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    May it have arisen out of the fable of King Midas, whose hand turned all that it rested on into gold, just as to Lucretius the jaundiced eye appeared to do ? Aurngo is indeed another name for jaundice: thus Scribonius (fl. c. 52 a.d.) writes: Aurugo,1 quam quidam regium, quidam arquatum morbum vocant.' [Golden jaundice, which some call the King's Evil, some the rainbow disease.] The suggestion that the term 'morbus regius' owns a legendary origin is perhaps supported by the fact that ancient writers share our difficulty in tracing it to its source. Celsus (fl. c. 25 a.d.) propounds the strange idea that it is referable to the luxurious treat- ment the disease requires. Utendum est lecto etiam et conclavi cultiore, usu, loco, ludis, lascivia, aliis per quae mens exhilaretur: ob quae regius morbus dictus videtur.2 [He must observe a better style in his couch, his chamber, his exercise, his abode, his games, his amuse- ments, and such other things as cheer the mind: for which reason, it seems, it is called the King's Evil.] Some 200 years later Serenus Sammonicus,3 who was put to death by Caracalla for the less offence of recommending an amulet as a cure for intermittent fever, thought fit to convert this theory of Celsus into verse. That storehouse of knowledge, the Natural History4 of Pliny the Elder (29 A.D.-79 a.d.), is hardly more happy in its quest. There one reads: Varro regium cognominatum arquatorum morbum tradit quoniam mulso curetur. [Varro says that the disease of the jaundiced is called the King's Evil, because it is cured by honey wine.] Presumably a Tokay of antiquity. Horace,5 however, seems to have been most impressed by the cutaneous 1 Scribonius, Conip. no. 2 Celsus, De Medic, lib. iii. c. 24. 3 Liber Medic. 1024. * Lib. xxii. 114. 5 Ars Poetica, 453.