Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Recently on the show, we talked about how
Speaker 1: one of the things that Marie and Adelaide Lenormant had
Speaker 1: studied while learning about divination and prophecy was the power
Speaker 1: of healing the king's evil. So the king's evil was scropula,
Speaker 1: and in parts of Europe from the medieval period all
Speaker 1: the way to the eighteenth century, monarchs were believed to
Speaker 1: be able to heal it. This episode originally came out
Speaker 1: on March thirteenth, twenty seventeen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy Eu Wilson and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Crime. Today's podcast was originally supposed to be about
Speaker 1: Afra Ben and don't worry if you are one of
Speaker 1: the many many people who asked for that one and
Speaker 1: are disappointed by the words supposed to be That episode
Speaker 1: is still in the works, but very early on in
Speaker 1: researching it, a book that I was reading was sort
Speaker 1: of setting the stage with a description of life during
Speaker 1: the Restoration that was the return of the British monarchy
Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty in the years that followed it, and
Speaker 1: one bit of This description was that when he was
Speaker 1: restored to the throne, Charles the second brought back a
Speaker 1: customary treatment for quote the king's evil, also known as scrofula,
Speaker 1: and that treatment was for the king to touch people.
Speaker 1: I love it. You know, medicine. Yeah, yeah, I knew.
Speaker 1: I knew that the practice of the monarch laying on
Speaker 1: hands to cure sick people had been around during the
Speaker 1: medieval period, but I did not know it had gone
Speaker 1: all the way into the restoration. And I definitely did
Speaker 1: not know that a particular illness was so connected to
Speaker 1: it that people literally called it the king's evil. So
Speaker 1: that was compelling enough to put off Afriben until a
Speaker 1: little later, which conveniently also gives me time to get
Speaker 1: through the immensely large book. Holly saw that book last
Speaker 1: week while I was in Atlanta. It was quite big.
Speaker 1: I did. Tracy was here visiting for work, and she
Speaker 1: held up the book and said, how am I ever
Speaker 1: going to get through this in time? Because it is
Speaker 1: really a serious tone it is it is, so I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you'll have more time to work on that one.
Speaker 1: Me too, because I was having that moment where like
Speaker 1: when you're in middle school, and you put off your
Speaker 1: paper to the last minute. Except I didn't put off
Speaker 1: the paper till the last minute. I just didn't realize
Speaker 1: until I got into it how colossal the research was.
Speaker 1: I like, how you think that's a middle school thing
Speaker 1: and not say, a in your forties working thing. It
Speaker 1: could be that to you. It is for me sometimes
Speaker 1: not on purpose. But you know, we do lots of stuff,
Speaker 1: so sometimes things fill in and I don't get as
Speaker 1: much time as I would like to write a thing.
Speaker 1: But today we know that scropula is caused by the
Speaker 1: same bacteria as tuberculosis, and tuberculosis has been around for
Speaker 1: at least nine thousand years. It is one of the oldest,
Speaker 1: if not the oldest, infectious diseases still existing on Earth,
Speaker 1: and most people are probably familiar with tuberculosis in its
Speaker 1: pulmonary form, which has also been known as consumption or thesis.
Speaker 1: The huge list of historical figures who were either known
Speaker 1: or believed to have had pulmonary tuberculosis is huge. It
Speaker 1: includes people like John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bronte,
Speaker 1: and many, many, many others. It's come up a lot
Speaker 1: in episodes of our show that Holly and I have
Speaker 1: worked on, including the history of the Grove Park in
Speaker 1: t Arh, the New England vampire panic, Alan L. Hart
Speaker 1: and then of course Selman Waksman and the development of streptomycin,
Speaker 1: which was the first drug successfully used to cure it. Scropula,
Speaker 1: which comes from the Latin term for brood sow, is
Speaker 1: extra pulmonary tuberculosis, so it affects the body outside of
Speaker 1: the lungs. Specifically, it's an infection of the lymph nodes
Speaker 1: that's caused by tuberculosis, although lymph nodes all over the
Speaker 1: body can be affected. In general, Scrofula has been used
Speaker 1: to describe an infection in the neck, and when untreated,
Speaker 1: it causes swellings, sores, and sometimes abscesses, in particular around
Speaker 1: the lymph nodes at the top of the neck and
Speaker 1: under the jaw. There's a little bit of debate about
Speaker 1: why a word for sow came to be used to
Speaker 1: describe scrofula. In some accounts, it's because pigs were prone
Speaker 1: to having tumors in their throats. In others, it's because
Speaker 1: scrofula makes your neck look thick and swollen like a
Speaker 1: pig's cassius Felix, who was writing in the year four
Speaker 1: forty seven, said it looked quote, just like the swollen
Speaker 1: neck of a sow, and some thought that maybe it
Speaker 1: was that the swellings and the sores brought on by
Speaker 1: scropula looked like pigs themselves. That one seems like the
Speaker 1: most unlikely to me, but it weirdly, I read a
Speaker 1: lot of old medical documents of people theorizing about why
Speaker 1: it was called that from like the seventeen hundreds. You
Speaker 1: know it's worth examination. But today we have diagnostic tests
Speaker 1: to confirm a tuberculosis infection, and thankfully we have the
Speaker 1: drugs to treat it, especially in places with reliable access
Speaker 1: to modern medicine. It's really rare for scrofula to become
Speaker 1: a serious problem, with the exception of patients whose immune
Speaker 1: systems are compromised or occasionally in a drug resistant strain
Speaker 1: of the disease, and when treated quickly, the symptoms are
Speaker 1: usually limited to painless swelling in the lymph nodes. But
Speaker 1: before the development of antibiotics, scraffia could become incredibly painful
Speaker 1: and disfiguring. It was also often mistaken for other conditions
Speaker 1: that also caused swelling or sores in the throat or neck,
Speaker 1: or those conditions were mistaken for scropula, and these included mumps,
Speaker 1: glandular disorders, various skin conditions, and cancer. Prior to the
Speaker 1: germ theory of disease, physicians had all kinds of other
Speaker 1: ideas about what caused scrofula. Under the ancient Greek idea
Speaker 1: of the body being regulated by four humors, scrofula was
Speaker 1: caused by an excess of phlegm. Charles the seconds Royal
Speaker 1: Surgeon wrote that scrofula came from the glands filling up
Speaker 1: with humor. Some physicians in history believed it was inherited
Speaker 1: and not communicable. In eighteen thirteen, William Turon described it
Speaker 1: as quote a genuine idiopathic hereditary disease, and in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty three John Kent called it quote an hereditary taint.
Speaker 1: Kent went on to say, quote the other causes of
Speaker 1: this disease are bad and unwholesome diet, insufficient clothing, neglect
Speaker 1: of exercise, and want of proper cleanliness. I may also
Speaker 1: observe that it frequently makes its first appearance after an
Speaker 1: attack of measles, smallpox, rheumatic fever or other debilitating affections,
Speaker 1: and it is often excited into obvious existence by blows, sprains, bruises,
Speaker 1: or other accidents. According to Thomas Spern, who wrote a
Speaker 1: treatise on scrapula in seventeen oh nine, it was quote
Speaker 1: a preternatural malignant tumor or humor produced by a particular
Speaker 1: acidity of the serum of the blood, either in gland,
Speaker 1: muscle or membrane, which it both coagulates and indurates, or
Speaker 1: in the marrow, which it always dissolves and also putrefies
Speaker 1: the bone. Hmm, I hope nobody's eating breakfast while they
Speaker 1: listen to this. There are several parts of this episode
Speaker 1: where if this were an episode of saw Bones, it
Speaker 1: would be the part where where Justin is going, hmmm,
Speaker 1: we can move on, Like you can tell he just
Speaker 1: wants Sydney to stop saying the gross part, Yeah, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't want you. And just occurs to me that
Speaker 1: if somebody is a little bit delicate of tummy to
Speaker 1: these types of things, this maybe pause until you're done
Speaker 1: with your meal. But in Fern's treatise, children whose parents
Speaker 1: had scrofula, especially if their mother did while nursing were
Speaker 1: more likely to develop it themselves. And quote here I
Speaker 1: cannot emit one observation by the bye that children also
Speaker 1: who are begotten at improper times of the moon have
Speaker 1: been often subject to be afflicted with this evil and
Speaker 1: to the last degree too of virulency. Let this be
Speaker 1: a warning to married people. The let this be a
Speaker 1: warning to married people made me laugh a lot. It
Speaker 1: makes the first time a lot. I just love the
Speaker 1: idea that depending on what time of the lunar cycle
Speaker 1: a baby is made might make it more you know,
Speaker 1: likely to contract this. Yeah. Fern went on to list
Speaker 1: others who were more prone to scrofula, including people whose
Speaker 1: blood was naturally too acidic, children who had rickets, people
Speaker 1: who were generally weak, people whose bodies didn't have enough
Speaker 1: quote heat for good digestion, living in places with air
Speaker 1: that was too thin or too thick or was bad,
Speaker 1: and also quote salt, sour, slimy meats or drinks. Not
Speaker 1: getting enough exercise, according to him, was yet another way
Speaker 1: you could develop scrofula. Okay, putrefying bone is not a problem,
Speaker 1: but slimy meats is like we're creeping up to the
Speaker 1: edge of my like cupability. Here, some physicians did conclude
Speaker 1: that scrofula and tuberculosis were related, even if all their
Speaker 1: other ideas about it were completely off base. John Kent,
Speaker 1: for example, who had named its cause quote an hereditary taint,
Speaker 1: also wrote that consumption was quote neither more nor less
Speaker 1: than scrofula of the lungs in an eighteen thirty three
Speaker 1: edition of a text on scrofula and cancer. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until eighteen eighty two that medical science pinpointed the
Speaker 1: bacterial cause of tuberculosis and confirmed that scrofula was caused
Speaker 1: by the same thing. Even then, there were naysayers who
Speaker 1: argued that scrofula was unrelated and not transmissible. Over the centuries,
Speaker 1: a wide range of treatments were used to relieve scrofula,
Speaker 1: or try to. Because the glands in question were usually
Speaker 1: in the neck, surgeries could be particularly dangerous, although some
Speaker 1: doctors did attempt them while still in the world of
Speaker 1: four humor theory. Treatments were often meant to balance the
Speaker 1: humors or drain excess through purgatives, diuretics and bleeding compresses.
Speaker 1: Poultices and topical bombs were applied to the swellings as well.
Speaker 1: And for those who thought that too much salt or
Speaker 1: too thin air are those sorts of things were the problems.
Speaker 1: The treatment would include a change of diet or a
Speaker 1: change of scenery. And we're going to talk about how
Speaker 1: scrophula came to be known as the king's evil that
Speaker 1: could be cured if the king touched it, But first
Speaker 1: we're going to pause for a little sponsor break. In
Speaker 1: medieval England, the name the King's evil eventually came to
Speaker 1: be directly connected to scrophula, but the basic idea goes
Speaker 1: back earlier than that and also connects to other diseases.
Speaker 1: In ancient Rome, the Latin morbus regius, or royal disease
Speaker 1: was used to describe a number of different diseases, including
Speaker 1: jaundice and leprosy, which today is known as Hanson's disease.
Speaker 1: It's not entirely clear where either of these associations came from.
Speaker 1: One is that royal was reference to gold, so jaundice
Speaker 1: being called the royal disease is because the color of
Speaker 1: the patient's skin. Another theory is that particular royal or
Speaker 1: noble families were prone to certain diseases long after the
Speaker 1: time we're talking about today, and in other parts of
Speaker 1: the world, epilepsy and hemophilia have been described as royal
Speaker 1: diseases because of their connections to royal families. There's some
Speaker 1: suggestion that people thought Hansen's disease could be cured through
Speaker 1: a royal touch, but there's the very little evidence of
Speaker 1: a king actually trying that, although of course there are
Speaker 1: biblical and other religious references that are not about a monarch.
Speaker 1: There are a few very spotty references to monarchs in
Speaker 1: England and France curing people through touch prior to the
Speaker 1: tenth and eleventh centuries. The first was Clovis, King of
Speaker 1: the Franks, who ranged from four eighty one to five eleven,
Speaker 1: although the record on that one is very sparse. There
Speaker 1: are also reports of miraculous cures at the hands of
Speaker 1: Robert the Second of France, also known as Robert the
Speaker 1: Pious or Robert the Pious, who was co ruler of
Speaker 1: the Franks with his father from nine eighty seven to
Speaker 1: nine ninety six, and then he was the soul monarch
Speaker 1: until his death in ten thirty one. But the first
Speaker 1: widely chronicled event of the royal touch was under Edward
Speaker 1: the Confessor, who lived from one thousand and three to
Speaker 1: ten sixty six, and he ruled England from ten forty
Speaker 1: two until his death. He's called the Confessor because of
Speaker 1: his reputation for being a deeply pious man, and he's
Speaker 1: the only king of England ever to have been canonized.
Speaker 1: Edward the Confessor reportedly cured a woman of scrofula. The
Speaker 1: woman had an infection under her jaw that was causing swelling,
Speaker 1: a bad smell, and multiple sores. She had a dream
Speaker 1: that if the king washed her with water, she would
Speaker 1: be cured, so she went to the court and asked
Speaker 1: to be given an audience. This might sound odd to
Speaker 1: today's ears, but asking for an audience with the king
Speaker 1: for something like this at the time was definitely not
Speaker 1: unheard of. Edward the Confessor, along with other monarchs, distributed
Speaker 1: alms and offered comfort to the poor and the sick,
Speaker 1: particularly on religious holidays, and in this case, when the
Speaker 1: woman was brought before the king, he asked for a
Speaker 1: bowl of water. There's some variation in exactly what happened
Speaker 1: next as described in later accounts, but in general it
Speaker 1: was more than just a laying on of hands or
Speaker 1: an anointing with water, combining the miraculous with the medical.
Speaker 1: Edward dipped his fingers in the water and touched the
Speaker 1: woman's abscesses, which opened up and drained, with some of
Speaker 1: the descriptions of what came out being far grosser than others.
Speaker 1: He kept dipping his fingers and washing and pressing until
Speaker 1: all of the putrescence was gone, and then he ordered
Speaker 1: the woman to be fed and cared for out of
Speaker 1: the royal purse until she recovered. I will repeat that
Speaker 1: if you go read up about this on the internet.
Speaker 1: Some of the descriptions are incredibly graphic. I originally had
Speaker 1: more graphic stuff in here, and then I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're gonna read this at ten o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, when we're both a little you know,
Speaker 1: still getting used to the day. Maybe this is a
Speaker 1: little too intense. I'm okay with the absess draining. I'm
Speaker 1: still back on slimy meat and the oh no. So
Speaker 1: there's some debate about whether this woman's symptoms were really
Speaker 1: scrofula or whether it was some other condition, but regardless,
Speaker 1: this one event solidified the connection between the King's evil
Speaker 1: and Scrofula, and soon the royal ability to cure through
Speaker 1: touch was connected pretty much only to scrofula. Thomas Fern,
Speaker 1: who's treat Us on Scrapula we referenced in Part one,
Speaker 1: wrote quote, but I beg leave here to make one digression,
Speaker 1: by the way, about our English term for the struma
Speaker 1: or scrofula is at it is, as it is now
Speaker 1: commonly called the king's evil in everybody's mouth before I
Speaker 1: begin to define what I have hitherto only been describing
Speaker 1: by name. And some writers think that this name was
Speaker 1: given to any scrofulous or struma's disease long before Edward
Speaker 1: the Confessor's time. But however, all agree at least that
Speaker 1: from his reign was called nothing else generally, and I
Speaker 1: may say vulgarly too, but the King's evil in England.
Speaker 1: Fern also wrote that the ability to heal it through
Speaker 1: touch was quote a particular gift to him at first,
Speaker 1: and to no body before him, as a singular reward
Speaker 1: of his holiness, And it was from there hereditary through
Speaker 1: the monarchy, at least according to this guy. This event
Speaker 1: also comes up in the work of Shakespeare, and Act
Speaker 1: four of Macbeth. Macduff and Malcolm are standing outside Edward
Speaker 1: the Confessor's palace, and a doctor comes through and mentions
Speaker 1: that there's a crowd of people inside seeking the king's touch.
Speaker 1: Malcolm then explains to McDuff what is going on. Quote
Speaker 1: tis called the evil a most miraculous work in this
Speaker 1: good king, which often, since my heir remain in England,
Speaker 1: I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven himself
Speaker 1: best known knows, but strangely visited people all swollen and ulcerous,
Speaker 1: pitiful to the eye, the mere despair of surgery he cures,
Speaker 1: hanging a golden stamp about their necks, put on with
Speaker 1: holy prayers, and tis spoken to the succeeding royalty. He
Speaker 1: leaves the healing benediction with this strange virtue. He hath
Speaker 1: a heavenly gift of prophecy, and sundry blessings hang about
Speaker 1: his throne that speak him full of grace. Although this
Speaker 1: scene takes place outside the palace of Edward the Confessor,
Speaker 1: his treatment of this woman for scrofula seems to have
Speaker 1: been a one time thing performed on one person, not
Speaker 1: a mass ceremony with a coin involved. However, it's a
Speaker 1: really good description of what this practice morphed into in
Speaker 1: later centuries as monarchs in England and France started touching
Speaker 1: large groups of subjects at special ceremonies and holidays. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though Shakespeare was writing about Edward the Confessor here,
Speaker 1: what he was describing was what was actually happening while
Speaker 1: he was living, when people went to get cured of
Speaker 1: the king's evil. Louis the sixth of France, who ruled
Speaker 1: from eleven oh eight to eleven thirty seven, viewed this
Speaker 1: practice as quote customary, and he treated whole crowds with
Speaker 1: laying on of hands and the sign of the cross.
Speaker 1: Edward the First of England, who ruled from twelve seventy
Speaker 1: two to thirteen oh seven, touched more than five hundred
Speaker 1: of his subjects to cure them of scrofula in the
Speaker 1: course of a single month. By the end of his reign,
Speaker 1: he was touching more than one thousand people every year.
Speaker 1: People travel great distances to the court of Philip the
Speaker 1: Fourth of France, who ruled from twelve eighty five to
Speaker 1: thirteen fourteen, and the people who traveled the farthest to
Speaker 1: see him were also rewarded with large sums of alms.
Speaker 1: Aure the fourth of France, who ruled from fifteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine to sixteen ten, touched up to fifteen hundred people
Speaker 1: in one single ceremony. I'm just gonna interject here that
Speaker 1: seems like a bad public health move. That's I was
Speaker 1: thinking about, like the germs, that how did all of
Speaker 1: these monarchs not constantly become ill themselves. It's a great
Speaker 1: question because they were magical clearly. Uh. It was Edward
Speaker 1: the Third of England, who ruled from thirteen twenty seven
Speaker 1: to thirteen seventy seven, who first started presenting those he
Speaker 1: touched with a coin, which was described in that passage
Speaker 1: that Tracy read from Macbeth. These coins became an ongoing
Speaker 1: practice known as angels or touch pieces, and were sometimes
Speaker 1: strung through with a ribbon to be worn as a talisman.
Speaker 1: Edward the Third's father, Edward the Second, also started the
Speaker 1: practice of the monarch donating gold or silver on Good Friday,
Speaker 1: which would be made into cramp rings said to have
Speaker 1: healing powers. For the most part, the first few generations
Speaker 1: of this royal touch were viewed as an outward expression
Speaker 1: of the monarch's personal sanctity, and if the monarch didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of personal sanctity, the gift would go away.
Speaker 1: For example, Philip the First was King of the Franks
Speaker 1: from ten sixty to eleven oh eight, and he reportedly
Speaker 1: did practice the royal touch at first, until he became
Speaker 1: too sinful for it to work for him. He wound
Speaker 1: up having the nickname Philip the Amorus. But that connection
Speaker 1: to personal piety shifted a little bit after the Protestant Reformation,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that after we paused
Speaker 1: one more time for a sponsor break. Over the years,
Speaker 1: some circular logic grew up around the king's evil and
Speaker 1: the royal touch. Scrapula was the king's evil because kings
Speaker 1: could cure it, and kings could cure scrapula because it
Speaker 1: was the king's evil. Following this same pattern, the monarch's
Speaker 1: practice of the royal touch started to be used as
Speaker 1: evidence of the monarch's legitimacy as the monarch. If the
Speaker 1: monarch did this thing, clearly they were legitimately the monarch.
Speaker 1: It sounds a lot like the Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: legend from Gondor about the hands of the king or
Speaker 1: the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful
Speaker 1: king be known. This shows up especially in the post
Speaker 1: Reformation reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who was queen from
Speaker 1: fifteen fifty eight until her death in sixteen oh three.
Speaker 1: Her first attempts at the king's touch seemed reluctant. However,
Speaker 1: after Pope Pious the fifth excommunicated her and declared her
Speaker 1: a pretended queen and a heretic, she revived the practice
Speaker 1: in part because her detractors claimed that God had taken
Speaker 1: the gift away from her for her heresy, and in
Speaker 1: one account, a Catholic woman came to her and begged
Speaker 1: to be cured, and when Elizabeth's touch was successful, the
Speaker 1: woman announced that the papal bull was clearly null because
Speaker 1: God was still working through the queen. Today's episode of
Speaker 1: the podcast was inspired by this description of Charles the
Speaker 1: Second's revival of the practice during the Restoration. Under the
Speaker 1: reign of Charles the Second's father, Charles the First, a
Speaker 1: form for healing at the hands of the king had
Speaker 1: become a part of the Book of Common Prayer. Charles
Speaker 1: the First had also had touch piece coins meanted that
Speaker 1: were inscribed in Latin, translated to quote the love of
Speaker 1: the people is the King's protection. He got executed so
Speaker 1: apparently love was not enough protection for him. Charles the
Speaker 1: First was king until he was executed for high treason
Speaker 1: and the monarchy was abolished. Oliver Cromwell then became Lord
Speaker 1: Protector of England, Ireland and Scotland. Cromwell was not a
Speaker 1: king and did not practice the royal touch, but Charles
Speaker 1: the Second, while in exile, continued the practice, in part
Speaker 1: as evidence of his place on the throne. When the
Speaker 1: monarchy was restored, Charles the Second's touch pieces were inscribed
Speaker 1: with the Latin for glory to God alone. John Evelyn
Speaker 1: wrote about Charles the Second's reinstatement of the practice of
Speaker 1: the royal touch after the restoration of the monarchy in
Speaker 1: his diary for July sixth, sixteen sixty. Here's what it said.
Speaker 1: His Majesty began first to touch for the evil according
Speaker 1: to custom. Thus his Majesty, sitting under his state in
Speaker 1: the banqueting house, the surgeons caused the sick to be
Speaker 1: brought or led up to the throne, where they kneeling.
Speaker 1: The King strokes their faces or cheeks with both his
Speaker 1: hands at once, at which instant a chaplain in his
Speaker 1: formality says quote, he has he put his hands upon them,
Speaker 1: and he healed them. This is said to everyone in particular.
Speaker 1: When they have all been touched, they come up again
Speaker 1: in the same order, and the other chaplain, kneeling and
Speaker 1: having an angel gold strung on white ribbon on his arm,
Speaker 1: delivers them one by one. So is Majesty, who puts
Speaker 1: them about the necks of the touched as they pass,
Speaker 1: while the first chaplain repeats quote, this is the true
Speaker 1: light who came into the world. Then follows an epistle,
Speaker 1: at first a gospel with the liturgy, prayers for the
Speaker 1: sick with some alteration, lastly the blessing. Then the Lord
Speaker 1: Chamberlain and the comptroller of the household bring a basin
Speaker 1: your towel for his Majesty to wash. Samuel Peeps wrote
Speaker 1: about it as well on April thirteenth of sixteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: writing quote, I went to the banquet house, and there
Speaker 1: saw the King heel the first time that I ever
Speaker 1: saw him do it, which he did with great gravity,
Speaker 1: and it seemed to me to be an ugly office
Speaker 1: and a simple one. Apparently, Charles the Second also had
Speaker 1: to set up a system to keep people from coming
Speaker 1: back for seconds. Basically, Charles the Second used the King's
Speaker 1: touch on ninety thousand subjects between sixteen sixty and sixteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. He and his court also tried to put
Speaker 1: a stop to anyone else treating scrapula through the laying
Speaker 1: on of hands. Charles the First had taken similar steps
Speaker 1: in his reign, and they had both also taken steps
Speaker 1: to keep people from coming back repeatedly. In sixteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: a father and his seventh son were investigated for their
Speaker 1: use of the son's purported healing powers. A neighbor had
Speaker 1: had scrofula and the child's grandmother had held the baby's
Speaker 1: hand up to the neighbor's neck, who had then reportedly
Speaker 1: been cured. Father and son went on to treat many
Speaker 1: more people, but were told to stop it. They were, however,
Speaker 1: spared for their punishment because folks were basically afraid that
Speaker 1: their followers would be angered if they were treated too harshly. Similarly,
Speaker 1: Valentine Great Rakes, also known as the Stroker, had been
Speaker 1: a lieutenant in Oliver Cromwell's army, but went on to
Speaker 1: become something of a faith healer. In sixteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: he was suddenly struck by the knowledge that he had
Speaker 1: the power to heal the king's evil. He started healing
Speaker 1: people with prayers and laying on of hands, and eventually
Speaker 1: his fame spread far enough that he was summoned before
Speaker 1: the court and ordered to stop. After repeated orders from
Speaker 1: increasingly more powerful figures within the church failed to get
Speaker 1: him to stop, the ecclesiastical Court decided that they were
Speaker 1: risking the ire of his followers, and they gave up.
Speaker 1: He finally wound up being summoned to Whitehall to appear
Speaker 1: before Charles the Second, the results of which did not
Speaker 1: make it into the historical record. It's there are so
Speaker 1: many different ways that conversation could have gone, because he
Speaker 1: and Charles the Second were both touching a whole lot
Speaker 1: of people to try to here there's cropula. So it's
Speaker 1: not one hundred percent clear whether Charles the Second was like, dude,
Speaker 1: you gotta lay off, this is my territory, or whether
Speaker 1: it was more like a meeting of the faith healers,
Speaker 1: or maybe they touched each other an event horizon opened
Speaker 1: up and things got really crazy. No, so, the idea
Speaker 1: of the royal touch as being evidence for who was
Speaker 1: the legitimate ruler appeared once again during the Glorious Revolution
Speaker 1: and the Jacobite attempts to return the Stewarts to the throne.
Speaker 1: William the Third, also known as William of Orange, and
Speaker 1: his wife Mary became joint monarchs in sixteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: William only performed the royal touch once, saying afterward quote,
Speaker 1: God give you better health and more sense. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: exiled Stuarts, including Bonnie Prince Charlie, kept up the habit,
Speaker 1: and Queen Anne, last monarch of the House of Stuart,
Speaker 1: touched hundreds of subjects. One was writer Samuel Johnson, who
Speaker 1: she touched when he was just two years old. In
Speaker 1: the words of John Kent's eighteen thirty three treatise on Scrofula,
Speaker 1: which we read from earlier in the show, quote, it
Speaker 1: appears that Queen Anne was the last sovereign who practiced
Speaker 1: such a ridiculous and superstitious imposition, and successor George the
Speaker 1: First put an end to the practice in England after
Speaker 1: becoming king in seventeen fourteen because he thought it was
Speaker 1: just a superstition. In France, the French Revolution put an
Speaker 1: end to the practice by overthrowing the monarchy in seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. See what you did. Now we can't have
Speaker 1: the King's touch. There is, of course, lots of debate
Speaker 1: about what was really going on here, from both a
Speaker 1: medical and a religious sense. There were doctors and clergy
Speaker 1: alike who viewed the practice with a lot of skepticism.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like everybody believed that this was a legitimate
Speaker 1: healing practice, in spite of the fact that speaking out
Speaker 1: against the royal touch got at least one person convicted
Speaker 1: for treason. Much like all of the other people who
Speaker 1: were told to stop being faith healers with scropula, this
Speaker 1: guy was ultimately pardoned because they were afraid of angering
Speaker 1: his followers. One common cause of scrofula in medieval and
Speaker 1: early modern Europe was contracting a bovine form of tuberculosis
Speaker 1: through drinking contaminated milk, and this comes up a whole
Speaker 1: lot in modern treatments of this whole phenomenon. This form
Speaker 1: of the condition didn't typically lead to other symptoms of tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: and it often resolved itself later, giving the patient a
Speaker 1: heightened immunity to pulmonary tuberculosis as well. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were like, maybe because so
Speaker 1: many people were getting this bovine form of tuberculosis through
Speaker 1: contaminated milk, and then it was resolving coincidentally after the
Speaker 1: monarch touched them. Maybe that explained at all, But that's
Speaker 1: really not uh really not quite an adequate explanation for
Speaker 1: something that went on for that many centuries. It's a
Speaker 1: very long time and thousands of people. Yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: if there's much on the record about the timeline of
Speaker 1: the healing, right, like, other than the one where there's
Speaker 1: discussion of the pressing of the abscesses and draining them.
Speaker 1: You know, it's Is it as though people magically walked
Speaker 1: away with unswollen necks and were instantly healed according to
Speaker 1: the record, or is it a case where it probably
Speaker 1: was just it running its course and they're like, the
Speaker 1: king touched me three weeks ago, and I feel much
Speaker 1: better now, yeah, Or a people selectively remembering the people
Speaker 1: who got better, right, and not remembering the folks who didn't.
Speaker 1: Like I said at the top of the show, I
Speaker 1: knew that this was a thing among medieval monarchs. I
Speaker 1: had no idea that it continued on and on and
Speaker 1: on all the way to the French Revolution. That's just
Speaker 1: threw me for a little bit of a loop. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
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