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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    polypharmacy of the physician and the handiwork of his chirurgical confrere. In years to come records are occasional of royal failures falling into the hands of the surgeon, and conversely of surgical failures falling into the hands of the King, but surely John of Gaddesden is unique in his deliberate provision for the contingency of the King's therapeutic impotence! Medical literature has not yet lost its clear and definite notion of what scrofula denotes. Hear what John of Gaddesden says: Glandulae. Conveniunt cum curatione scrofularum : quia non dififerunt, nisi secundum magis et minus : nam- que glandula est una; sed scrofulae ut plurimum sunt multae, et maxime in collo et faucibus.1 [Glands. They fit in with the cure of scrofula, for the difference between them is one only of degree: for a gland is single, whereas scrofula is generally multiple, and chiefly located in the neck and throat.] Thomas Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, bears witness in his writings to the great vogue of the royal touch in the reign of Edward III. Bradwardine was born in Sussex, about 1290 a. d. : he was educated at Merton College, and afterwards became proctor and chancellor of the University of Oxford. During the wars in France and Flanders he was chaplain and con- fessor to Edward III. In August, 1338 a. d., he ac- companied Edward to a conference at Coblentz, with his brother-in-law, Louis of Bavaria, going by way of Cologne. On his return he was made Prebendary of Lincoln and later Archbishop of Canterbury. He did homage to Edward for the primacy on August 22 at Eltham, but died of plague on August 26, 1348 a.d., the day after he reached London, at the palace of the Bishop of Rochester in Lambeth. He was a. profound theo- 1 Rosa Anglica, lib. ii.