Faith-healing and Christian Science / by Alice Feilding.

  • Feilding, Alice.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Faith-healing and Christian Science / by Alice Feilding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    been of a strictly devotional character. A secular form, so to speak, familiar to readers of modern history, is that commonly known as ‘ Touching for the King’s Evil,’ which was so popular a remedy for scrofula, goitre, and epilepsy in this and in Continental countries.1 We first read of its being practised in Eng- land by Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century,2 and it only became obsolete after the death of Oueen Anne in the eighteenth.3 The hard-headed Elizabeth is said to have been much averse to what she doubtless regarded as an ignorant and godless superstition, but she had nevertheless to conform to the practice, and, according to a contemporary account, her ‘ touching ’ was most efficacious.4 1 It has been a disputed point as to whether this royal cura- tive faculty originated in England or in France. The House of Hapsburg were also credited with the balsamic virtue. Lauren- tius, first physician to Henry iv. of France, derives the practice of‘touching’ from Clovis, a.d. 481. 2 This is recorded by William of Malmesbury, who wrote in the following century. 3 Samuel Johnson was touched by this Queen in 1712, aged thirty months. 4 William Tookes published a book (Charisma $ s'we Donum Sanationis) in Elizabeth’s reign on the subject of cures effected by the royal touch. He vouched for these from personal obser- vation.