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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    seous materials as weasel's blood and pigeon's dung. Then he proceeds: Si haec non sufficiant, vadat ad Regem, ut eum tan- gat atque benedicat: quia iste morbus vocatur regius; et ad hunc valet contactus Serenissimi Regis Anglorum. Ultimo si non sufficiant ista omnia, traditur patiens chirurgico: qui non scindat nervos, nee arterias, nee venas, quae prope eas sunt propter periculum mortis, vel propriae raucedinis, et similia. Si patiens sit rusticus, potest laxari cum ovo cocto, pistato cum lacte Titymalli.1 [If these measures are not sufficient let him betake himself to the King, that he may touch and bless him: for that disease is called the King's Evil, and the touch of his most Serene Highness the King of the English avails to cure it. But if all those measures end in failure, the patient is handed over to the surgeon, who must be careful not to cut nerves, arteries, or veins, which lie close beside the glands for fear of killing him or causing consecutive loss of voice, or some such other trouble. If so be the patient is a countryman, he may be relaxed with a boiled egg pounded up in milk of Titymallus.] There is little enough in all that John of Gaddesden has to say, that is not borrowed directly either from Gilbertus Anglicus or Bernard of Gordon. But whereas Gilbert speaks vaguely of kings curing it, and Bernard of Gordon awards pre-eminence to the French king, John of Gaddesden declares in no uncertain language for the English king. This harsh note of international jealousy, first struck on this string by Guibert de Nogent, and waking so many sympathetic echoes in other spheres of controversy, is heard again and again in French and English writings on the King's Evil, right down to the end of the chapter of King's Healing. John of Gaddesden has the grace to introduce one variant at least into his wholesale plagiarism, in assign- ing to the royal touch a place midway between the 1 The text appears to be corrupt.